Beyond the Fire
by Neutral Ground
Summary: Shepard's journey to Eden Prime was not an easy one, nor was it simple. These are the events leading up to and including Mass Effect 1 in the life of Nicole Shepard, a woman who has loved, suffered, fought and been betrayed: the woman who is the first and last hope of the universe. Will feature a femShep/Liara romance.
1. Chapter 1

_Pre-amble: This is going to tell the events preceding Mass Effect 1, from the perspective of my femShep. Rather than retell the game—which you've already played—and repeat dialogue—which you've already heard—I'm endeavouring to flesh out my Shepard's background and introduce several elements which are entirely my own creation. I'll be going off canon backgrounds, but I'll be expanding them a great deal and adding quite a bit of my own._

_Beyond the Fire will include the events of Mass Effect 1 and, once I get there, there will be a Liara romance, because I'm a sucker for the colour blue._

XXX

Where there had once been a shining colony on a lush world, Mindoir was now an ashen scar slashed across the blue-green face of the planet. Rakesh Malhotra turned away from his shuttle window. Approaching a planet was usually inspiring; now he only felt a nascent sense of primal dread. It was too much to look at, to imagine all those bodies. If he were a different kind of man it would make Rakesh weak to his stomach. But Rakesh had seen bodies before. He had been a soldier. Still was. Only now….

_Now my mission is more secret, more important … and less honest_, he admitted to himself. He didn't pretend to understand the people he worked for, the shadowy agents of an Alliance black ops codenamed Shadowhill. He just knew that they acted on behalf of humanity, and that was what mattered.

As he looked back out at the charred remains of what had once been a peaceful farming colony, hot tendrils of anger wormed through his chest. The turians at least had their damned sense of honour, but the batarians were just four-eyed, ass-faced freaks with 18th century morals. They'd only left a single little girl alive—just one damned girl.

"Ready for landing," the pilot warned. Rakesh waved him on from the back of the shuttle. One little ten year old girl had somehow managed to survive. The reports were restricted only to Alliance Black Ops, but apparently she'd taken a pistol from a fallen guard and shot two batarians—right in between their four ugly eyes. Then she'd managed to hide and wait it out. A girl like that … Rakesh's boss had been interested. So Rakesh was interested.

When the shuttle landed, Rakesh walked out to survey the carnage close-up. Mindoir's weather was annoyingly pleasant. The grass was an off-bluish green, due to some chemical in the soil or something, but other than that it almost looked like a sunny day back on Earth. Except the prefab buildings were all damaged or demolished, and here and there the grass had been burnt away to reveal blood red earth. Sakesh shielded his eyes from the sun and looked to the only standing building, a relatively large home that had somehow survived the batarian attack and ensuing battle with the Alliance. The girl was there, he knew, under watch until Rakesh got there. Whoever ran Shadowhill had powerful enough connections to make the Alliance wait on his pleasure.

When Rakesh walked into the building, he was struck with the sudden realization that this had been someone's home, quickly transformed into a military base of operations; there were faded spots on the wall where personal viewscreens had been hung, and marks on the floor from where the furniture had been dragged out. In their place there was now a small military command center, supplies stashed on one end of the long, narrow room, military computers hastily set up. One soldier was standing guard. She saluted when Rakesh walked in, though she didn't—couldn't—know Rakesh's rank or name. Rakesh's uniform was identity enough.

"Sir!"

Rakesh nodded in response.

"She's in there?"

"Yes, sir." The soldier pointed to a room in the back. "Won't say a word. Not surprising, I guess." The soldier looked at a loss. "Poor kid. I've got a little boy a couple years younger. Can't stop thinking about him."

Rakesh didn't know what to say to that. He didn't have kids.

"Is it okay for me to go in and see her?"

"I can't see why not." The soldier shrugged. "Be careful, though. She might snap or something. I couldn't blame her if she did, after what she saw."

Rakesh smiled.

"I'll be sure to keep my guard up."

"I'm not joking, sir. That girl does not fuck around. Not another damn soul survived this mess. They all got carted off before we could take it back. She was holed up beneath a prefab for eleven days, just waiting." Rakesh knew all this.

"Noted," he muttered. He walked past her and into the small, windowless room.

Inside there was a desk, with two chairs. Nicole was sitting in one, staring at her hands on the desk. She didn't respond to Rakesh walking in.

"Would it be all right if I took a seat?"

The faintest jerk of her head. A nod, he realized.

He took the opposite seat.

"Hi, Nicole. My name is Rakesh Malhotra. I'm an Alliance soldier."

Nicole looked up. Her face was blank. He'd seen the same look on soldiers: shock.

"Like the ones that killed the batarians?" She was unusually direct. Her red hair had jumped out at him when he'd come in—some sign of genetic tampering, probably way back in her bloodline from the genetics fad in the late 2070s—but now it was her eyes that pierced him. He'd never seen such green eyes, filled with sharp suspicion in a ten-year-old's face.

"Not quite." Rakesh managed a smile. "I'm a special kind of soldier. I work with a lot of other special soldiers, and scientists, at a place far away."

Nicole's eyes narrowed, but she didn't say anything. Rakesh took that as a sign of encouragement.

"What we do is figure out how to make the best soldier possible. How to keep humanity on the edge, so that things like … what happened here," Rakesh leaned forward and let his hands rest on the table, "Don't happen again."

"How?"

Rakesh raised his eyebrows. He hadn't expected that. Nicole Shepard's face remained inscrutable.

"Research, training, hard work. A little experimentation. We do whatever it takes." Rakesh waited, not for Nicole to say anything, but for her to think. Then he spoke again,

"It's quite remarkable what you did. You must feel rather awful but it is incredible that you survived. You displayed a real natural talent."

"My brother always said I was good at sports," Nicole said distantly. Rakesh got the feeling she wasn't really talking to him.

"Your brother was a doctor, right? I never met him, but he seems like a good man."

"He's the best."

He was dead. He had been one of the first to die; they'd managed to extract some footage from a blasted security cam that showed him shielding patients with nothing but his arms. It was one of the most stupidly noble things Rakesh had ever seen; but then again, there wasn't much a doctor could do in the face of guns. He had died without fear. It seemed this girl shared her brother's fire.

"And … you lived with your mom, too?"

Nicole turned away.

"Yeah."

"I can't imagine how you must feel."

He waited a while longer. Tried to get the measure of her. She was scared. Pretending to be tough, but still just a ten-year-old girl that had seen everything she'd known massacred. He didn't envy the person tasked with getting inside her head.

"Nicole, I've seen some evaluations. Your report cards, aptitude tests, and the tests they ran when they found you here. You're a remarkable young woman. If you ask me—" Rakesh raised his eyebrows, as though inviting her to, "—you'd make a remarkable soldier. If you want to, you can come with me. You can come to the program, and become a soldier. A special kind of soldier who will keep things like what happened here from happening."

Rakesh waited patiently.

"What if I don't?"

He shrugged.

"I've been told you have no next of kin, no one else … I'm afraid you'd be taken to an adoption agency. Beyond that, I don't know. I'm sorry. I'm only here to make you an offer. But I can promise you that if you come with me, your life will mean something. Something more."

Green eyes stared into his.

"Okay."

XXX

Nicole flew by shuttle back to an orbiting Alliance vessel, and was told she'd be given passage to another Alliance outpost. Rakesh confided to her that she'd be taken from there to another, secret facility, but after that she didn't see him much. She was left to her own quarters—a space nearly the size of her old home—and was pried at by a psychologist who had come with Rakesh. Nicole ignored him and answered his questions as quickly as she could.

She didn't know what to do with herself. She curled up on her bed, just sitting, trying not to think. She wanted to do something to distract her mind, but whenever she toyed around with the omnitool they gave her or hooked up to the extranet, it somehow made it worse. She couldn't read. She only ate when they forced her to.

They arrived one week later in some world in a system Nicole had never heard of. Rakesh emerged from hiding and guided her onto another shuttle, and from there they got on another ship. This one was smaller. Nicole's quarters here were barely more than a broom closet, but she liked that better anyway. She slept a lot.

She had a port window. When they came out of FTL she saw that they were approaching a meteorite maybe a tenth the size of Earth's moon. She could see surface-entrances on the ground; most of the installation must have been subterranean.

A chime came out of her omnitool, startling her; she'd left it on the floor of her cramped quarters. She picked the small device up and affixed it to her wrist.

"You are ordered to proceed to the main docking ramp," said a bored voice. It wasn't a question. Nicole didn't care, so she found her way to the ramp. It was a small ship, and besides, Nicole remembered details. She hated that, now. She needed to forget.

She was walked into a facility with white steel walls and dozens of research areas, labs, and testing chambers. Rakesh had left her the moment they'd entered the facility; an Alliance soldier, hidden by a helmet and hardsuit, marched her along now. The destination of her journey was an office deep inside the complex. The soldier shoved her in, nearly knocking her small body to the floor. Fear flooded her for a moment, before she dismissed it with the same cool calm that had saved her on Mindoir. She was going to be safe here.

The man behind the desk was old, with graying hair and a salt-and-pepper beard.

"Nicole Shepard." He smiled with his teeth. "My, my. I have heard so much about you. Do you know who I am?"

She shook her head.

"I'm Dr. Gabreau. I'm a behavioural analyst. That means I watch people and figure out why they do what they do. I run this center, and I work with all sorts of scientists to find out how to make the best soldier. That is where you come in." He picked up a data pad and smiled again, that too-wide smile that somehow made Nicole's spine tingle. It was cold. "We have all sorts of data on you, Nicole, and you show great promise. You can be great."

He waited. She realized he was waiting for a response.

"Thank you, sir."

He smiled congenially.

"You're welcome. But … I'm going to need one thing from you." He raised a finger. "Will you give yourself to this program?"

"Yes." Nicole was certain.

"You don't know what that means yet. But you know it's _right_. That's the kind of people we need. People who know what's _right_," Gabreau said, a manic twinkle in his eye. It was unsettling. "I'll ask you one more time." He flipped a switch on his deck. "For the record. So you're sure. Will you give yourself to this program?"

Nicole swallowed. For a moment her throat didn't work. A sudden impulse gripped her in a vice, warning her, urging her to run. But there was nowhere for her to go. No other answer for her to give.

"Yes."

XXX

Her quarters at Shadowhill were even smaller than they had been on the ship. Her room was better described as a cell, its floor just long enough for the bed it contained; the bed fitted to a full sized woman. Nicole understood immediately that she was meant to grow up here. It was good. They didn't send her to her room for much other than sleep, though. The first weeks were tests. Those were easy. They gave her more injections than she could count, and on some level she knew that these were the sorts of genetic modifications that soldiers received. She'd never heard of anyone so young receiving gene therapy, but she didn't care about that, either.

There were no faces she could remember. She never saw any scientist or psychologist more than once. The days blurred and the nights dissolved into restless sleep. After a while, after they'd gotten enough empty answers, the psychologists stopped coming. She started going to a sort of school, except the room was small, and it was only her and a single teacher behind a pane of glass. She never disobeyed. Something told her that if she did, something terrible would happen. What they taught her was easy. Advanced mathematics, physics, biology and xenobiology. She started learning alien languages. That was harder, but she had lots of time to practice.

In two years' time she was fluent in the four major dialects of asari, the two primary turian derivatives, and salarian common. She learned the histories of each major council race.

She never saw Rakesh again. Dr. Gabreau visited every now and again during a school session. Nicole had never met another kid in those closed, cold corridors, but she knew there must be some somewhere. They spoke of other students.

She knew one thing for certain. There were no non-humans here. Everything she learned about the turians, the asari, the salarians, even the krogan, was a strict detailing of military history, cultural inclinations, weaknesses, sympathies, and prejudices. She learned about their biology. She was shown corpses, told to cut them up to look inside, identifying organs. She pointed to where she would attack if she had to.

She was taught to use a gun, how to assemble and disassemble one. She was taught how to hack tech, which she'd always been good at. She remembered the time before Shadowhill vaguely, as though her memories were obscured by fog. Looking back hurt, so she focused on the task at hand, and there was always a task at hand. As she started puberty her bodily changes were handled with curt efficiency.

One day, she realized it was her thirteenth birthday. She kept track of the days in her head; unless she was carrying out a specific exercise using an omni-tool or personal computer, she wasn't allowed any implements herself. Her birthday came to her like a piece of sunken wood floating to the surface; the memory surprised her more than anything. She was supposed to be sleeping. A part of her wanted to explore the feelings lurking in the back of her mind, the faint memories, the comforting warmth that threatened to burn her.

But she had been taught that a lack of sleep was not acceptable excuse for poor performance, so she let herself fall to sleep.

She woke up in the morning four minutes before the alarm went off, as usual. She triggered the little button next to her bed to let the system know that she was awake, then proceeded to the back of her room, where the wall slid back into a recess to reveal a cramped shower. She clambered in and showered, shivering in the freezing water out of nothing but habit. After three minutes, the water stopped and automated driers blasted her with brief, but pleasant heat. Water drained from the bottom of the shower. A slit opened near the bottom and her clothes were ejected from the receptacle, as they were every day. She pulled on the tank-top and tight-fitting pants that had been her uniform for every day in the past two years and buckled on her military-grade boots. She left her shower and stood at the foot of her bed, waiting for the door to open.

Normally, someone would arrive in two minutes. Always the same two minutes that she had to herself. Those two minutes threatened to expose and allow all the ugliness she'd buried so far inside. It was always a trial.

Her two minutes passed. Sweat formed on her palms. For the first time she touched the flat steel panel that became a door when her supervisors came. Nothing happened. She stepped back. She started repeating a turian poem in her head. She hadn't been supposed to learn turian poetry, but one of the instructors had shown her a favourite. That woman had disappeared after that, but such disappearances weren't uncommon. She whispered beneath her breath in the Octan dialect,

"_What is born of Fire rises_

_ What fades is not destroyed_

_ What glimmers hope despises_

_ What shudders faith restores_

_ What death begets becomes_

_ The last of us are still."_

She had no idea what the poet had meant. Strictly speaking, she had no idea what any turians meant. But it made her feel better.

In four more minutes the door finally opened. She almost said something but remembered herself in time. Her frustration escaped her as a pained gasp. The person standing on the other side of the door was Dr. Gabreau. Smile affixed to his face, he grabbed her shoulder and steered her down the long hall which contained her room. Nicole immediately knew that if she had to she could spin around, grab his wrist, and break it before he had time to respond.

"Have you ever met another student here, Nicole?" Dr. Gabreau asked. His voice was conversational. He always called Nicole a student.

"No." Nicole's response was without inflection. She could imitate Gabreau's jovial manner if she had to, but he'd recognize the imitation.

"Of course not. Did you know the rest are sleeping in these rooms right now? We stagger your wake periods." The kindness slipped away from his voice. "You're a particular favourite of mine, you know. No protestations, no struggles, no petty dilemmas. I knew you would turn out well."

"Thank you, sir."

"You've done well. Now you're ready for the next stage in your training."

Nicole continued in silence. Eventually Gabreau took her to a lab. He brought her to a table. There was something lying beneath a pale blue sheet—a body. From the way it was bulging at various points beneath the sheet, it had to be a male turian. Gabreau left her and went out a door. For a while she was alone.

From a speaker in the ceiling of the room Gabreau's voice calmly directed her,

"Remove the sheet and deposit it in the waste-bin to your left."

Nicole removed the sheet, folded it evenly eight times, then placed it neatly in the empty trash. She turned back to see a naked turian on the table, a hole blasted into his left waist.

"Describe the cause of injury."

"Volkov-line sniper rifle; five-inch extended suppressed barrel; shot distance one hundred yards. Round entered from behind. Notable; turians not often shot from behind." Nicole pulled on the gloves next to the body and poked her finger into the wound. "Seared quality of flesh indicates incendiary rounds. Likely second-grade or higher."

"Well done. Step back from the body."

Nicole complied. The gloves felt clammy in her hands.

"Wake hostage."

A mechanical arm extended from the side of the table, swung back around, and injected something into the turian's arm. The distinct hum of electricity and biotic energy reverberated in the air. Nicole's eyes, normally sharp, attentive, and utterly without feeling, had gone wide as saucers.

"Describe likely time to full resuscitation."

"Tw-two minutes," Nicole barked out. It was a guess at best. She'd backed away from the table, into the flat steel wall behind her. Her palms were pressed flat against the cold metal. Her heart was racing.

"Incorrect. Patient will be revived within forty seconds. Gradual return of motor control factoring in turian adrenal response times?"

"Thirty-five seconds."

"Good."

Gabreau fell silent. Nicole watched in silent horror as the turian started to stir. That distinctive flanged voice groaned in obvious pain. He clutched blindly at his side. He was still completely helpless. Nicole looked to the door and found it was just a flat piece of the wall. There was no way out.

She scanned the room for any sharp implement, maybe a scalpel, or some sort of tool, but there was nothing. The turian said something in his native language. Nicole had no translator, and she was too addled to translate. He spoke some dialect she'd never heard. His was still an alien tongue.

Slowly, he opened his throat and started to scream. He clutched at his side then snapped his jaws shut, forcing himself into a sitting position on the table.

He looked up at her, and his eyes were the most beautiful blue Nicole had ever seen in her life. He was naked, and in pain, and he was obviously scared. She didn't know if he'd ever seen a thirteen year old human girl before. She'd never seen a turian male before, not in person. His skin was brown and faded but his eyes were beautiful.

He asked her a question. She ran it over in her head and broke it down into its components. Decrypted it. He had asked who she was.

"My name is Nicole," she responded in the most common turian dialect.

"You speak Octan-turian," he replied in the same. That face made of gnashing teeth and alien frills was completely foreign to her, but he seemed surprised.

"I speak two dialects," Nicole responded automatically. He let out an odd flanging sound that she realized was a laugh.

"Are you going to kill me?" His eyes met hers. She wondered what he thought of her.

"I don't know."

Gabreau's voice returned in the form of the speaker overhead. It said, in English:

"Kill him."

Nicole swallowed.

"I have to."

The turian only nodded. He seemed relieved.

"You are a child. But to die fighting is still a better death than … _kris vos sendiil_." Nicole couldn't understand the last part.

"I don't know your last three words."

He chuckled.

"You wouldn't. Old turian proverb, from a dead tongue. It means 'burnt by wind'. More literally … coward."

Nicole nodded. She knew a turian would not simply roll over and die. But she found she didn't want to kill him. He'd spoken more honestly, more openly to her than anyone had in three years. She found she missed that connection, that fundamental living connection, with a fierce hunger. It was an ache in her heart.

"I don't want to," Nicole whispered. Gabreau couldn't speak Octan, but he'd have a translator on-hand.

"You have to," the turian said. He shrugged. "Wish I were wearing something, but a good death is a good death. Bare or no."

Without warning, he leapt from the table at her, claws flashing in the dim light of the lab. Nicole dodged out of reach only on instinct, and she realized with slow terror that though he was wounded, this man was a soldier, a military creature, and he was tall and strong and covered in metallic skin. He leapt at her again, pouncing like a tiger, and this time Nicole ducked beneath him and aimed a jab at his wounded side. He anticipated it and twisted in mid-air, avoiding the attack and flying into the far wall. He got back on his feet and stared her down. At his full height he was over seven feet tall, while Nicole was barely 5'4". She circled behind the table, putting it between them. The turian's mandibles twitched in what Nicole now recognized was a smile.

"I take it back. You might be a child, but this will be a good death." Inexplicably, Nicole flushed with pleasure. The turian leapt onto the table, and Nicole rolled to one side just as he charged towards her. She readied herself to attack him but instead found that his clawed rear foot had raked her in the back, sending her flying. Shocking lines of pain flared beneath her shoulder blades. She ignored the pain and turned to see that the turian was charging again. This time she waited, and at the last minute slipped beneath his legs. He expected another attack at the wound, and moved to block; but Nicole was already gone, backpedalling to the other side of the room.

_How can I kill him?_ She thought desperately. Her back was killing her. His claws had torn her shirt nearly off her back, despite the tough, military-grade material. Her eyes went wide and with the briefest sorrow, she knew how to kill him.

She pulled the thin black fabric over her head and ripped the back of her shirt, leaving her with a heavy black rag. She whipped it into a corded shape and held it between both hands. The turian closed his eyes and smiled again. He whispered something that Nicole couldn't hear.

He ran at her again. Nicole trapped one clawed hand with her shirt, yanked him to the side, then slipped behind him, clambering up onto his back. She wrapped her legs beneath his torso and pulled the shirt across his neck, strangling him not beneath the jaw, as she would on a human, but deep beneath his shoulder ridges. He gasped for air and struggled to grab her with his claws. One hand, flailing back, dug into Nicole's bare shoulder and tore through the skin there, but she ignored it and pulled. His breathing was growing faint. She felt a little sad—

The turian reached back for her face and his claws found her cheek, splitting it open down to her jaw, near her neck. She jerked out of the way just in time to prevent him from damaging anything major. She pulled. Pulled. Pulled.

The turian breathed for the last time. His limbs shuddered. He fell, and Nicole went down with him, the strength completely emptied out of her arms. She was shaking, not from fear or terror but from pure adrenaline and exhaustion.

"Well done."

The wall opened into another door and two workers in protective suits walked in. One picked Nicole up in her arms and carried her into the hall. She brought her to a surgery room and injected something in her arm. Nicole realized she had been muttering beneath her breath. Reciting the turian poem. She saved the last line, just in time, for herself.

_The last of us are still._

XXX

She woke to cold water splashing her in the face. Her arms were bound behind her and the room was dark; she was naked, on her knees, and completely disoriented. A bucket of water was set in front of her face. She leaned forward to drink and gagged; it was salt.

Without warning, a man grabbed her from behind and forced her face into the water. She screamed and kicked, trying to resist, but the bonds on her hands were tight. With all that was left to her she fought the urge to inhale the water, to take it into her lungs. Her chest was burning and her limbs stopped kicking.

She inhaled seawater. A moment later she was pulled from the bucket as she hacked and wheezed her way back to sense. When she was done, she vomited. Her throat was raw and bleeding. She was picked up and thrown back into a chair. The man grabbed her arm and inserted a needle into her bicep. Fighting back felt impossible now.

Pain wracked her and flowed through her veins, sending her into violent convulsions. She shook and screamed, trying to find _something _to make the pain go away, but it was so consuming, so total. Her pain tolerance was superhuman but she was nothing before the all-consuming fire.

As she passed out the last things she remembered were blue eyes and a mandible smile.

XXX

She was clothed again. Her arms were tied behind her, to a cold metal chair. This room was just as dark as the last. As she tried to think lingering pain thrust into her consciousness, blinding her. The pain was in her muscles, flaring with shocking intensity whenever she moved.

A light blinded her. She flinched away from the brightness and winced as the lingering effects of whatever they'd drugged her with sent burning knives into her neck. When she was able to see again, she saw that a man in a white uniform was standing in front of her. His face was unfamiliar.

"Do you know why you are here?"

"No," Nicole gasped, stunned at the effort it took to speak. Bandages on her face rustled uncomfortably when she spoke. Someone had cleaned and bound her wounds.

"You disobeyed. It was only a moment, only the slightest hesitation, but that was enough." The man stepped forward and looked down at her. "I'm going to share something with you, Nicole. You don't exist. Not according to any government or Alliance database. There are records of your unsurprising suicide shortly after you left Mindoir on a ship taking you to a foster home. No one remembers you. No one even knows you're here.

"You are known to Alliance officials as XGS-zero-twelve. When you came here you gave yourself to this program. That means all of you. It means no turian poetry. It means not the slightest moment of hesitation when you are given an order by the administrators of this program. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," Nicole replied immediately. She was shaking.

"Not yet," the man promised. "But you will."

He kicked over her chair. She landed on her side and cried out as one of her arms was pinned by the steel back of the chair. The next kick came for her ribs and knocked the wind out of her lungs. She clenched her jaw shut and refused to scream. The man kicked her again. And again. And again. Nicole only opened her mouth to spit out blood, and endured the rest.

For hours the man tortured her. He started simple and grew increasingly creative. Electrical shocks. He drowned her with water and a towel. At one point he brought in a biotic who held Nicole in stasis while the man injected her with the same burning drug that had knocked her out before.

He let her fall to the floor to sleep. The next day he continued his work. Three days passed like that. Each day Nicole clung to the image of blue eyes, trying to find a place to hide away while the white-suited man beat her bloody. He never maimed her, though, never damaged her beyond use. With cold logic Nicole surmised that they did not want to dispose of her.

On the fourth day the overhead lights all came on at once, revealing the room to be little more than a steel box. Nicole was lying on the floor; they'd stopped bothering tying her up yesterday. She had no strength left.

Dr. Gabreau walked into the room and tsked his displeasure. Nicole managed to look up at him. He picked up the chair that had been thrown to one corner of the room—when had that been done? Had she been sleeping?—and set it down in the middle of the room. He picked Nicole up and sat her in the chair. She flinched at his touch but didn't have the strength to fight back.

He kneeled down and looked into her eyes.

"Will you give yourself to this program?"

Nicole shook. She swallowed. Tried to find her voice. He snapped his fingers and a nurse walked into the room, carrying a bottle of water. He thrust it into her mouth and Nicole drank greedily. He threw the bottle to the floor.

"One last chance, Nicole. Will you give yourself to this program?"

Nicole managed to nod her head. She looked back at him. She gathered her voice and in that moment she saw not a greying human male, but a turian facing his death. She saw her brother, warning her to hide before he ran off to try and save doomed patients. The cruel clarity of the memories stunned her.

But they were only memories, and she was still sitting on a chair in a cold steel room, staring into the guiltless eyes of a true believer.

"Yes."


	2. Chapter 2

It seemed fitting that a place called "Shadowhill" was nestled in an asteroid belt in a forgotten corner of the Horsehead Nebula. Anderson was flying there on the _Windsor_, a small cruiser manned with a not-insubstantial crew of fifteen men and women. He didn't know many of the soldiers very well, but he was glad for their presence. Every inch of this mission felt wrong, and David Anderson had a pretty developed intuition for "wrong."

He still remembered Hackett's words.

"This place hasn't had proper command oversight in ten years, Anderson. If even a quarter of the rumours that have come back to me from Shadowhill are true, then we need eyes on the ground. There's no one I trust to this better than you."

That had been a nice enough compliment, but Anderson couldn't help but feel like he was wasting his goddamn time. Yet, for all that, there were fifteen soldiers aboard this vessel, all of them well-trained and in some way distinguished. They even had a medic on-board, a doctor named Chakwas; Anderson hadn't had much time to get to know her, but her resume was impressive.

"Captain Anderson, we're in range to dock." That was Pressley, the ship's navigator, examining the Galaxy Map. Anderson himself was at a view-port, watching the station come into view. It was a sombre site, and Anderson found himself dreading what he might find there.

"Bring us in, Pressley. And open comms with the station," Anderson ordered.

"Aye aye, Captain."

The angular alliance vessel slipped towards the docking bay, moving through the dark silence of space. The loading ramp disengaged from the station and attached to their hull. Anderson took a breath and nodded to the two soldiers standing guard near the exit of the ship. He'd already ordered them to have their hardsuits and weapons ready. He wasn't going to just walk into this place without back-up; his own pistol was holstered at his thigh. They walked through the loading ramp and found three white-clad men waiting for them. One of them matched the description of the center's Administrator, Dr. Gabreau, and his smile was as plastic as the logo on his suit.

"Captain Anderson! It's a pleasure to meet you." Gabreau extended a hand. Anderson shook it and gave a curt nod. He watched Gabreu's eyes slide quickly over the soldiers on Anderson's either flank. Was he surprised? Offended? Or something else? Anderson had no idea. He wasn't cut out for this sort of political crap.

"Pleasure's mine, Doctor. Hope our visit won't be too much of an inconvenience."

"Not at all, not at all! Truthfully, we're rather pleased to finally get a chance to show off our hard work. I know our recruits will be pleased to see a real Alliance military official. I've promised them a visit like this in the past but I'm afraid my requests fell on deaf ears." Gabreau chuckled. Anderson had his doubts about that. "I guess it's easy to forget us, all the way out here. But we're doing important work, sir, _important work_."

"Well I'd be happy to see your recruits as soon as possible," Anderson said mildly.

"We'll have to schedule one-on-one interviews, to ensure they each get their time in the spotlight." There were, officially, twenty students at Shadowhill, but Anderson doubted that, too. "Five of our little troopers should be ready to face an Alliance Captain!"

Gabreau smiled widely, but Anderson couldn't help but wonder if the other fifteen were dead. He wondered if they'd even existed at all.

"Are any of your students ready now?" Anderson pressed the issue. He could faintly detect the soldier on his left stiffening a little. She'd noticed the rising tension.

"Well, as a matter of fact, one is just concluding a training exercise. This way." Gabreau guided them down another long corridor, passing by offices, labs, and what looked like advanced gyms on the way. Everything was hidden behind flat steel doors.

Gabreau led them to a small room with large windows at one end, overlooking a long shooting range as though it were a skybox. In the range, a young girl with fire-red hair, maybe sixteen years old, was rapidly assembling a sniper rifle from barely matching parts. She was fast-fabricating and modifying parts as she needed to with an omnitool. It was mesmerizing.

"Parts from three different sniper rifles, in varying states of disrepair," Gabreau said. Anderson walked over to the window. There was a console in front of the window, from which biometric readings were visible.

"What's her name?" Anderson asked. She'd nearly finished the improvised weapon.

"Nicole Shepard," Gabreau supplied instantly. It meant nothing to Anderson, but he hadn't expected it to. No one knew where Shadowhill got their kids, which was part of the reason Anderson had been sent there in the first place. "Identification Number XGS-zero-twelve. She's particularly proficient with sniper rifles, infiltration, sabotage, and tech manipulation. You must meet her. She has an incredible mind."

Nicole had finished the rifle. She raised it, took aim, and fired three shots at three targets. Perfect headshots, each time. Anderson noted with some unease that the targets were shaped deliberately like turians, asari, and krogan. The shot meant for the krogan target had gone where the eye would have been on the real thing. Gabreau pressed a button on the command console.

"Nicole, stand at attention."

It was barely perceptible, but for a moment the girl didn't seem to respond to her own _name_. She blinked, then immediately laid the sniper rifle on the bench she'd assembled it on and saluted. Gabreau clicked another button on the console, and the window turned into a viewscreen, zooming in on the girl's face. She had the most shocking green eyes, but even more stunning were her twin facial scars. Between her lip and her nose there was a thin, perfectly straight line, but on her left cheek there was a massive, jagged scar that ran from her temple to her throat. The scar was faded, and old. It didn't disfigure her facial features, but it gave her cold stare a striking fierceness.

"When did she get that scar?" Anderson asked. Gabreau shrugged.

"No idea. She came to us with it. Most of these children come from ruined homes. We give them purpose."

Anderson didn't have anything to say to that.

"I'd like the full history on her, please."

"I'm afraid you know as much as we do. We fetched her three years ago from Illium, where she was living as an indentured slave. Apparently she'd been tricked into a forty-year contract when she was just eight years old. Served those first five years waiting tables at some café. Asari sluts." The last words came out of Gabreau's mouth in the same way as he might describe an interesting cloud. Anderson tried not to stare. He knew that the Alliance had a bit of a xenophobia problem, but he'd never heard anything so extreme as _that_, particularly from an administrator during an official review.

"Then I'd like to meet her. Straight away."

"Of course. We'll need our guards on hand, though, just to be certain. Nicole's an exemplary student, but glitches do happen."

"She's a sixteen year old _girl_," Anderson said, with too much feeling. Gabreau was getting under his skin. This entire _place _was getting under his skin.

"She's a sixteen year old weapon," Gabreau corrected him. "A sixteen year old weapon that could kill you with nothing but the shirt on her back."

"Fair enough. Let's interview the weapon, then." If Gabreau could detect Anderson's displeasure, he pretended not to.

"Of course, Captain." He pressed a button on the console, signalling the distinct chirp of a commline. "Send in two third-level escorts to bring XGS-012 to Interview Room C9. Captain Anderson would like to have a word with her."

XXX

Gabreau's men escorted Anderson into a small office with white walls. There was a one-way mirror on one wall of the room; Gabreau had indicated he would be on the other side. Gabreau's guards stood on either side of the door. Anderson's soldiers, not knowing what else to do, stood next to them.

Nicole was sitting at a table, her palms flat on its surface. Anderson could make out dozens of tiny scars on hands as calloused as a lifelong miner's. He took a seat.

"Hello, Nicole. I'm Captain Anderson."

"Hello, sir." Nicole's response was automatic, almost robotic. Anderson felt his heart sink.

"I saw you at the shooting range a little while ago. That was some impressive stuff, kid. How long you been doing that?"

"That exercise is a recent addition to my training schedule, sir. At best estimate the first such exercise took place nine solar days ago, and has been repeated twice, including today, sir."

"Well. That was, like I said. Impressive." He had no idea what to say. He tried not to stare at her scar, but when he didn't he wound up looking at those eyes. He felt like he was in laser-sights, jade-green moonbeams burning a hole to the back of his brain. "Do you like it here, Nicole?"

"Yes, sir." No hesitation.

"You want to join the Alliance then, when you're old enough?"

"Yes, sir."

Her eyes never wavered, never looked away from his. Her every word was as precise and deliberate as a glacier's step, predetermined by the forces of tides and gravity that were entirely beyond its own control. Anderson felt the most absurd desire to reach out and take her hand, tell her things would be all right.

But he could feel the guards at the door watching.

"Do you have any hobbies, Nicole?"

Nicole stared at him.

"You know, things you like to do for fun."

For the first time, he caught the slightest moment of panic. The briefest self-doubt flashed on her face, before she hid it beneath a mask of military blankness.

"I enjoy learning alien languages, sir."

"Really? How many can you speak?"

"I am fluent in the four most common asari dialects, as well as seven sub-dialects, sir. In addition I speak the major turian languages, four Colonial dialects, salarian common, and have a rudimentary understanding of batarian."

"Sounds like you're most interested in asari and turians, then," Anderson prompted kindly.

"No, sir. Their languages are merely more complex and numerous. The salarians and batarians, for example, have a unified linguistic system with simple dialect variations." The last part was true, but Anderson could tell that she was lying. She didn't want anyone to suspect she was _interested _in any aliens.

"I suppose you learned some asari on Illium?"

There it was again, a split-second's hesitation. If Anderson wasn't trained to notice, he never would've seen it.

"Yes, sir."

Dr. Gabreau's voice crackled over the intercom.

"Captain Anderson, merely as a suggestion, perhaps you could ask Nicole questions more relevant to her training?"

Anderson had to strongly resist the urge to tell Gabreau where he could put his 'suggestion.' Instead he replied,

"No, that'll be all for now."

The girl was dismissed by Gabreau and escorted out by the two armed guards. Anderson was given a small apartment near the scientists' quarters to put his things, so that he could prepare for more rigorous demonstrations. He noticed with some unease that there was nowhere for Anderson's soldiers to sleep. That was fine; he could just rotate soldiers on and off the _Windsor_. When Anderson said as much, Gabreau's response was so vacant of meaning that he might as well have said nothing at all. Much to Anderson's displeasure, Gabreau informed him that one-on-one interviews would be "impossible" from now on. When Anderson tried to press him for details, Gabreau spoke in circles, blocking him with one excuse or another.

The next day he was shown several demonstrations, each one of individual children. He never saw them in groups. Did _they _ever see each other? He saw two sixteen year olds do the same weapon-assembling exercise that Nicole had been doing on his first day; neither was nearly as quick. In Nicole's exercise, she was placed into a large maze with two light mechs. Gabreau showed Anderson a bird's-eye view from ceiling camera feeds. Nicole dispatched the mechs in minutes.

"Were those mechs armed?" Anderson asked.

"Only to give a light stun. Painful, but nonlethal, and more importantly, impermanent. We can't risk damage to our star pupil, now, can we?"

Anderson felt sick to his stomach. He didn't have anything that could shut this place down—not yet. But these kids were being treated like machinery. The way Gabreau talked about Nicole reminded Anderson of the way some soldiers talked about a favourite gun. Over the next two days, he saw demonstrations and training exercises and physical readouts, all of which were barely believable. He saw children with the scars of old men.

He started to realize that he wasn't going to learn anything by following Gabreau's orders. There were secrets in this place, and they wouldn't be given to him. Luckily, Anderson had experience in taking secrets for his own.

He waited until it was late at night, when most of the base had shut down. The center was run in cycles so that there was nearly always someone out and around, but there was a single hour in every 24-hour cycle where the entire facility went dead. Anderson brought his best tech expert into the facility for that hour. Luckily, Gabreau's knowledge of Anderson's crew was limited to what Anderson told him, which was nothing.

On Anderson's orders—given back on the _Windsor_, to be sure of secrecy—the tech specialist disabled the listening devices in Anderson's room. Then he ordered her to temporarily disable the cameras; trick them into displaying the footage from the last quiet hour. She did it without comment. Good old fashioned Alliance discipline.

"Thanks, soldier. Stay here, but keep your gun at the ready. If I contact you, I'm probably gonna need you to save my ass."

The woman chuckled.

"Aye aye, sir."

Anderson crept into the hallways, lit only by pale light-strips on the floors. He left the scientists' quarters and passed by the testing areas, into the wing he'd never visited. Expecting to find the children's quarters, he found only more corridors. He crept along. The doors in this wing were all marked "Interrogation."

He looked down the hall, and in the faint light he could see the slightest break in the uniform flatness of the walls. One of the rooms was open.

_Shit shit shit_. If he got caught—well, actually, if he got caught, there wasn't a damn thing anyone could say to him, but he somehow suspected Alliance protocol wasn't observed with the strictest obedience, here. Despite himself, he crept forward. He could hear voices, just the faintest voices whispering in the dark. He stopped.

One of them was a turian.

He crept closer again, moving without making any noise. Sweat was forming on his brow, even though the station was cold. The other voice became clearer: it was a young girl's.

"…sorry," she whispered. It was Nicole.

He was just outside the door, now. It was opened only a crack.

"You had no choice."

"I didn't want to."

"You had no choice," the turian repeated. He sounded exhausted, and in pain. There was a slurping sound, like he was eating or drinking something. "You've saved my life."

"They wouldn't kill you."

The turian laughed, a soft, wheezing sound that barely penetrated the dark.

"Why not? I'm just barefaced mercenary scum, a nobody—no one's looking for me."

There was a long silence.

"No one's looking for me, either."

"I earned this. I deserve this. I—you don't. You were just a kid. You didn't deserve this." The turian was near-delirious, Anderson realized. "You never had half a chance and look how you've turned out. Raised by xenophobics and you're here saving my life." The turian coughed. "You're _rohstiik_."

Anderson blinked. His translator didn't have a word for that.

"I'm not. I tortured you."

"They would have killed you, and me, if you didn't. I wouldn't be eating this now. We wouldn't be talking. Strictly speaking, from one torturer to another—it was quite well done. You should be proud." The turian wheezed. "Sorry. Bad joke."

"It's okay. It was funny."

"One thing I always appreciated about you humans. You always had a sense of hum—_fuck my bleeding plates_ _there's someone outside_."

Anderson opened the door and stepped into the room, his hands raised. Nicole had whirled around, her eyes wide in a panic. In the small, square-shaped room, there was a naked, one-armed turian. In his one hand he held a small bottle filled with some drink.

"It's okay—it's okay. I'm not here to spy on you. I'm not with Gabreau."

Nicole didn't say anything. She looked from Anderson to the turian, horror plain on her face. It was the only emotion he'd ever seen on her.

"Name's Talon," the turian said, regarding Anderson with cool calm. "Think I've got the record for longest-surviving turian prisoner at Shadowhill, thanks to my hero here." He gestured to Nicole. She didn't say anything.

"I've tripped the cameras," Anderson started, before Nicole interrupted him.

"So have I. I saw your hack and worked around it. That would've gotten you killed. I thought it might've been a trick from Gabreau." Nicole's voice was cold, analytical, emotionless.

"Well, glad you saved my ass, kid," Anderson muttered. "Tell me what goes on here. As fast as you can."

Talon glanced at Nicole and nodded. Anderson couldn't help but be amused by that; this turian prisoner was the only person she trusted.

"They torture us. They make us hurt non-humans, mostly turian and batarian. I've only ever seen two other students—I was told to kill them. I've had to kill lots of aliens, with a gun, or a knife, or just my shirt. They've done a lot of gene therapy on us to make us stronger. My cuts heal faster." She displayed her left arm, the one criss-crossed with tiny scars. They were self-inflicted.

"Child," Anderson whispered. He'd never been good with kids. He didn't know what to say. He could scarcely believe what he was hearing, out of the mouth of his sixteen year old girl. "How long have you been here? Where are you really from?"

"Six years. I—I was from Mindoir." Nicole started backing away from him, towards the turian. He could see it in her eyes, the flight-or-fight response in a trauma victim. He let it drop.

"How devoted are the people here to Gabreau?"

"I'd know that better than her," Talon interjected. "She's only seen what Gabreau wants her to see. Besides, I've seen more of the kids."

"Did one of them take your arm?"

"She did." Talon grinned, an expression that was terrifying on a turian face. "Saved my life. The arm was going toxic, and they were just going to let me die the slow way. She managed to make surgery look like an interrogation, muddied only by the fact that she'd applied too much of a brain-addling drug which triggers pain-killing hormones in turians. Gabreau was impressed by her brutality but disappointed by her lack of chemical knowledge." Talon laughed. "Bloody idiot. I'll tell you this, though: everyone in here is marching to Gabreau's drum. All of the kids are. Nicole's the only one I've met who's managed to keep herself."

"Is it possible the other kids just haven't had a chance to show you?"

Talon shrugged with one arm.

"It's possible, but I doubt it."

Nicole stepped forward.

"Please, you have to save him. He can't survive here. They'll kill him."

Anderson stared at her in astonishment, and in that moment resolved that he would die before he let this girl stay here.

"I'm going to get both of you out. But we'll need a plan of attack. Do either of you know any weaknesses to this place?"

"Only that it's run on fear," Talon said. "The scientists here wear armor to act as guards when they have to, but there's no real security staff. If you wanted to storm the place Gabreau and his troops wouldn't be your problem." Talon looked him in the eye. Turian eyes had always chilled Anderson, and Talon's were yellow, like a snake's. "The problem is the other kids, the ones who Gabreau's indoctrinated. They'll fight you, and each one of them is a damn killing machine. Nicole's the best, but she's just one. There are six, other than her. How many soldiers do you have?"

"Ten who are combat ready."

"That won't be enough," Talon promised. "Not in a direct engagement. Unless you want to tell this girl to go assassinate her peers. She could," Talon warned, "But I'd have to try and kill you out of the principle of the thing."

"I'm not ordering any damn assassinations," Anderson muttered. Nicole had remained silent, clearly grateful. She couldn't be used to holding many conversations like this. "All right, then what about an escape? Gabreau won't give me their security protocols."

"Gabreau can lock down any cell division from his personal omnitool. As far as I know, he's the only one with that power. Get to Gabreau, you can shut down everything but a path out of here, to your shuttle. Only problem is, if he has a chance to call security, they'll be on your ass before you can blink twice, and he won't be calling scientists in fake armour. He'll wake those kids and tell them to kill."

"Will they really kill an Alliance Captain?" He addressed this to Nicole. She looked up at him.

"We have to accept any order Dr. Gabreau gives us, without exception."

"What about you?"

"I don't want to. I have to, though." She clenched her fists and closed her eyes. "We have twenty-eight minutes before Officer Dawson is going to wake up and perform a routine walkaround so we should stop soon."

"What if I helped you escape, Nicole? What about that?"

"I don't know. I want to. I don't know." Nicole was whispering something beneath her breath. Her fists were shaking.

"Hey, it's okay, I promise," Anderson whispered. He nearly touched her on her shoulder, but he realized how disastrous that could be. "Everything's gonna be fine. Just think of it as another mission, okay? A training exercise. Just a thing you've got to do."

"That might help," Nicole admitted. She shuffled on her feet. "I should go. If they find me here they'll—" She stopped. She breathed heavily, carefully, controlling herself.

"They'll torture her. For weeks," Talon supplied. He took one last drink from the bottle. There must have been something solid in there as well, because he chewed it. "They'll kill me, of course. Probably make her do it. Then they'll make her kill you."

"Not if we stop them they won't,' Anderson muttered.

Nicole interrupted. Her face had become a mask, her voice cool and professional. As coping tactics went, it was one of the more unnerving ones Anderson had seen.

"You should leave now. We can meet here again in the next quiet hour. Can you have a plan ready by then?" Anderson nodded. "Good." She handed him a small data chip, the size of a thumbnail. "That has blueprints of the facility, a complete list of all staff shifts and schedules, armory location, and security procedures."

"Where'd you get this?" Anderson blurted.

"Observation and hacking. I've got to go."

Talon stopped her with his one good hand.

"Nicole. The bottle." Nicole blanched and picked it up. Her hand was shaking. "Promise me you won't tell anyone what's happened here, _rohstiik_." Anderson didn't have time to ask what "rohstiik" meant.

"I promise, sir."

"Good. Now go, the both of you. I've got a long day to look forward to." He managed to crack a smile. Anderson turned around, but Nicole was already gone. "She's a good kid. Human, by your gods and mine, you'd better be what you say you are, or I will find a way to make a spectacle of your death."

The threat wasn't surprising, but the calm confidence with which the turian delivered it—despite his obvious physical ruination—was impressive.

"By this time tomorrow," Anderson assured him, "We'll be on our way out of here."

"Tell me something. You humans always lie—turians never lie. Nicole's never lied to me, and that makes her the only human I can trust. So how can I trust you?"

"Don't know if you can. But you're going to have to."

Talon grinned.

"Guess you're right, human. Though it won't matter much if Gabreau gets you in one of his torture chambers. Get out of here. Remember to close the door."

Anderson made it back to his quarters in the quiet, and found the soldier waiting for him there. He'd nearly forgotten her. She stood at attention, but didn't say anything.

"This place is a lot worse than we thought," Anderson said, not really to her. He sat on the bed Gabreau had provided for him. It felt dirty, tainted somehow. "A whole hell of a lot worse."


	3. Chapter 3

There were no mirrors at Shadowhill. Occasionally Nicole was able to catch her reflection in polished steel, but she saw only a distorted image of her face. She hadn't seen herself clearly in years. The only thing she knew for certain about the way she looked was her scar; she could feel it if she rubbed her hand along her cheek. There were scars all over her body, of course, including particularly nasty ones on her back. She found herself wondering, absurdly, if Anderson thought she was a monster, because of her scarred face.

That was foolishness, and on some level she knew that. Anderson was a soldier. He'd seen people with scars before.

She wanted so badly to trust him, though everything in her told her to run, to tell Gabreau. She was glad Talon had made her promise. Curled up on her bed, she knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. The cameras in her room were running images of her sleeping in the last quiet hour.

Nicole kept thinking about the other children, the ones she'd never seen. Would they try and stop Anderson? Of course they would. If Nicole didn't have Talon, she would've tried to stop him. She had met the turian three months ago, just after Gabreau had made her torture him. He'd been thirsty, and something in his eyes had reached a deep part of Nicole, a part she'd almost forgotten. In the next three days, she'd formed a plan. She knew about the quiet hour, and she figured out how to safely hack the cameras after running it over in her head for a couple days. Then she'd synthesized some dextro-amino supplements from a few of the chemicals in one of the labs. That had been the risky part.

After that it'd been a simple matter of finding out which cell was the turian's, and visiting him. At first he'd been understandably cautious, but he'd figured out what was going on soon enough. Talking to him felt rejuvenating, like it was bringing a long-dead part of her back to life. Talon was light-hearted, for a turian. He made her laugh. The sound had been so foreign that at first it had scared her.

Now she had a chance to save him. The greater chance—that she might get out—was so vast that it was hard to comprehend. She hadn't been outside Shadowhill in six years, and everything before that was too painful to revisit. The thought of anything beyond the asteroid was as frightening as being flung naked into space. She checked the clock in her head; she'd fabricated an omnitool out of spare parts a year ago, but she hadn't fallen out of the habit of keeping her own time. It was time to shower.

She got up and walked into the shower, letting the ice cold water fall down over her body; lean, muscular, and criss-crossed with scars. Memories drifted to her mind, of a time when her skin had been clean and unbroken. Once she'd been a normal girl. She remembered Anderson asking her about hobbies. She couldn't have any now, but when Nicole Shepard had a family she'd loved building model spaceships. Her brother was a doctor, and he'd helped her build a model of the Destiny Ascension.

The shower shut off automatically. Nicole waited for the fans to dry her off, then pulled on her clothes. The sleeveless shirt hid most of the worst scars on her back, but her arms were still a landscape of old injuries. One particularly nasty scar wound its way down her left bicep. The first time she'd been ordered to kill another student, she'd hesitated; the other student had taken advantage and stabbed her with a scalpel.

She shook away the memory. There was no time for memory anymore.

She stood at attention and the door opened, at the usual time. As expected, an anonymous guard directed her to another training room.

Nicole hoped she wouldn't have to kill anyone today.

XXX

Gabreau smiled like a shark. All teeth.

"I hope you've been enjoying your stay with us here, Captain Anderson?"

"Oh, yes, Dr. Gabreau. I've been very impressed. I'm just off to file a preliminary report, now."

"You needn't return to your ship, Captain, we have plenty of—"

"I appreciate the offer, but I need to check up with my crew, as well. By now I figure they're pretty bored. Might as well let 'em know we won't be here much longer."

"Of course, of course." Dr. Gabreau's fake smile remained perfectly in place. "I assure you, the students here are quite happy that you've come, as well—"

"Tell me something, Doctor."

"Yes, of course." Gabreau seemed surprised.

"Nicole Shepard is sixteen years old. Isn't that the minimum age for Alliance registration and training?"

"Yes, but we don't just offer military preschool, Captain Anderson. When she's ready, she'll be able to enter Alliance service as an asset with unparalleled skill, likely as special ops. The option still exists for her to remain undocumented, a sort of shadow agent—sent to remove sensitive targets, for instance. I think you'll agree, given what you've seen, that she should hardly be wasted on ordinary ground combat."

"Right. Now, if you'll excuse me."

"Absolutely. I'll have someone escort—"

"That won't be necessary, Doctor." Anderson left Gabreau's office before the man had a chance to respond. The pair of soldiers Anderson had brought with him were waiting outside the door, and followed him back to the ship. He waited until he was on the CIC to say a word.

"Captain on deck!" Pressley called out. Anderson stood above the galaxy map, where he could best address the crew. He chimed an order into the computer to summon the ship's entire crew to the CIC, and waited until they had all assembled there.

"Ladies and gentlemen, there's no easy way to say this. This place is as dirty as they come. I'm sure you've all felt it when you've been on the station. They torture people there. They've been torturing those kids. And there's at least one of them we're going to pull out. A young girl, named Nicole Shepard. Redhead, got a mean looking scar on her left cheek."

The soldiers nodded.

"If we can, we're going to try to get any other kids out, but that's only after we get Nicole onto this ship. I can't speak to the conditioning of the other children; they may attack us."

"Not to question your judgement, Captain," said Dr. Chakwas, "But these are children. Surely your men can handle them with minimal risk?"

"These are children who have been trained for years using methods I can barely stomach. They're taught to follow's Gabreau's orders without question. If we go in there with guns blazing, we may well have a bloodbath on our hands."

"Point taken, Captain." Chakwas looked like she might be sick. Anderson couldn't blame her.

"From Nicole I've received blueprints of the station and security schematics. Fredericks, Rodriguez, you have special ops experience, correct?"

"Yes, sir!" The two said it almost in unison.

"Good. You're going to help me come up with a plan to extract Nicole safely. The rest of you, I want full combat awareness. Hardsuits, assault rifles, the full order. I want concussive rounds ready in case any of those kids attack you. We're not shooting any children. Understood?"

Unanimously, the soldiers yelled:

"Yes, sir!"

Anderson descended from the CIC as the soldiers went about preparing for combat, then approached Chakwas before she returned to the medbay.

"I want you ready for injuries, and to receive any kids we can extract. I want to know exactly what Gabreau did to them, if there's any trauma, implants, anything. I know you're not a psychologist, but I'd like to get your opinion."

Dr. Chakwas looked uneasy.

"Aye aye, sir. Permission to speak freely, captain?"

"Granted."

"This place … _Christ_, it was funded by the Alliance. These are bloody children. And what you're telling me … I don't know what to make of that."

"Me neither, Doctor," Anderson muttered. "Me neither. All we can do now is try and fix it."

XXX

"We're going to need to be on that station during the quiet hour," Rodriguez said, her voice a distant whisper. Anderson had already briefed them on the station, and showed them the security readouts Nicole had given him.

"I agree. The corridor to the docking bay will definitely be locked at that time. We've only got two options: hack the controls, or get Gabreau. We've already discovered how secure Gabreau's systems are."

"You said the girl managed to hack the cameras safely." That was Fredericks, a dark-faced man with deep eyes. "Could she get the door?"

"I don't think so. She didn't consider it a possibility, anyway. Which means we have to get Gabreau's omnitool. We can take him while he's sleeping, but that's bound to trigger an alarm."

"Sir, if I may make a suggestion?"

"Sure thing, Rodriguez."

"We've seen the girl, what she can do. If you really trust her, we should have her lead the infiltration. She knows the place, she knows Gabreau, and that kid is damn freaky. Uh, pardon the language, sir."

"No, you're right. I don't like this. I wish we had more of a plan going in. But we don't. So suit up, soldiers. We're heading back to Shadowhill."

XXX

During the day's training, Nicole had noticed that Anderson and his soldiers had been absent from the observation areas. She hoped that meant that they were preparing to get her and Talon out, not that they'd simply decided to leave. Fear pooled in her stomach, even as she carried out brutal training exercises on autopilot. At the end of the day, she was given a meal packet and returned to her quarters as normal. She waited there, sitting on her bed with her knees hugged to her chest. For some reason, memories kept threatening to bubble to the surface, after having been buried for so many years. She kept remembering her brother.

His name had been Ryan.

There were only 14 minutes until the quiet hour. That was too long, really. She regarded her thoughts with mounting dread. Her brother had been a doctor. When she thought of him, his face blurred and twisted into Dr. Gabreau's rictus smile. An unfamiliar burning curled in her chest, addling her senses. She wanted to scream.

Instead, she remembered what Talon had called her. _Rohstiik_. There wasn't any word for it in English, but what it meant roughly translated to "honoured by cruel battle." She smiled. She wasn't entirely sure what a friend was, but she liked to imagine that Talon was her friend. Even if she had chopped off his arm.

She passed the rest of the time by doing sit-ups and push-ups, just to keep her blood running and adrenaline flowing. The slight burn in her muscles helped her keep her mind off of what might happen tonight.

Just as the quiet hour dropped, she re-engaged her hack on the cameras in the hall and slipped out of her door. Then she proceeded quietly down the halls towards Talon's cell, and unlocked it the same way she had before. She was lucky that Gabreau didn't consider Talon, with his one arm, a high security risk.

When she walked into Talon's cell, she found the turian there, barely breathing. She rushed to his side and found him bleeding from his right shoulder. Nicole cursed when she realized that someone had reopened the wound Nicole herself had inflicted. Moving quickly, she ripped a strip of her shirt off and used it to bind off his wound and slow the bleeding.

"I can try and find some medigel—"

"No," Talon said. His voice was a wheezing gasp. "No. You can't risk missing your pick-up."

"You might die."

"We all die," Talon promised her. "Given the choice, I would die helping you."

He took her calloused hand in his clawed one.

"Please, do not deny me that."

"Okay."

They stayed there in the dark for a while, Talon holding her hand. The turian poem that Gabreau had tried to make her forget kept coming back to her. She remembered the blue eyes of the first turian she'd killed. She wished she'd known his name.

Luckily, Anderson joined them with two soldiers in tow. Nicole turned around and asked,

"Do you have any medigel?"

"Sure."

"It's Talon, he's been hurt."

Anderson moved towards Talon, and Nicole moved out of the way. He pulled a packet out of his breast pocket and applied it to Talon's shoulder. The turian grimaced and reached for the wound.

"That better?"

"Yeah, thanks," Talon muttered. The bleeding had stopped.

"What's the plan?" Nicole whispered. The fear slipped away. This was just another operation, another exercise. She could do those. She _always _did those.

"Nicole, you're smaller and faster than we are. Would you be able to slip into Gabreau's office and grab his omnitool?"

Nicole nodded.

"We'll trip alarms. We should leave Gabreau and get out immediately once we have the tool. Otherwise we risk capture." Anderson seemed surprised, but he didn't comment.

"Once we're aboard the Windsor, we can think about trying to get some of the other kids out."

"That would be unwise, sir," Nicole said. "If the other trainees aren't going to be directly attempting to kill you, they will certainly be trying to disable the ship. I recommend one of your soldiers escort Talon to the access route to the docking bay. He'll be slower going."

"You're the boss," Anderson replied. He sounded amused.

Anderson ordered Rodriguez to take Talon to the docking bay, then took Nicole to one side. He was careful not to touch her. He didn't know what she'd been through, and he didn't want to trigger a panic response in the girl.

"Nicole, are you sure you're ready for this?" Nicole blinked, as though she didn't quite understand the question.

"Of course, sir."

"All right. Take this. Let's hope you don't have to use it."

He handed her a pistol. She accepted it without hesitation, checked the sight, and disabled the safety. Anderson and Fredericks followed her down the dark corridors, moving noiselessly. Blackness surrounded them like a blanket, softened only by the soft blue glow of light strips on the floor. Nicole led them through the darkness and signalled in Alliance protocol. It was hard to remember that she was just a child.

"This corridor leads to Gabreau's office," Nicole finally said, as they came to a junction of four long hallways. "The floor is pressure-sensitive, so the moment we start down the hallway we'll trigger alarms. I can delay them by ten seconds. We'll have to run."

"All right," Anderson whispered. Nicole did something with her omnitool and waved it at the console on the wall. Then she tore off at a sprint, leaving Anderson and Fredericks chasing in her wake. She slid to a stop in front of Gabreau's door, then slammed her omnitool against it. Electricity arced from her tool and onto the lock, popping it open. She slipped into the room just as alarm bells started to ring. Anderson took up a position outside Gabreau's door with Fredericks. In another moment, Nicole was back outside.

"Where's Gabreau?"

"Knocked him out. Come on!"

Anderson didn't need to be told twice. They ran from Gabreau's offices and towards the exit. A scientist got in their way, but without breaking momentum, Nicole leapt into the air and slammed her knee into his face. Anderson and Fredericks ran past the scientist, whose blood was splattering everywhere out of his nose. More scientists emerged from their quarters, but they were behind them, and too late.

When they arrived in the loading hall, they found Rodriguez was dead. A young boy, no older than fourteen, had a pistol pressed to Talon's skull.

"Put the gun down!" Anderson ordered. At that moment, Nicole shot the kid in the arm, shattering the bone and sending the pistol flying. The boy grabbed the pistol with his good hand and aimed at Anderson. Nicole's next shot went between the child's eyes.

They ran. Anderson grabbed Talon, but the turian's heavy body was nearly immobile. He grasped at Anderson's gun.

"Give it to me. I don't have long, not even with the medigel. I'll keep the kids off you. Won't shoot 'em … just keep them away."

"No!" Nicole rushed to his side and grabbed him, her own pistol still in her hand. "You can't! We're saving you!"

"Haven't I already told you?" Talon asked. He smiled that terrifying turian smile. "You've saved my life, _rohstiik_. We both know you don't have the time to argue. Go."

Nicole leaned forward and kissed Talon on his forehead plate. Talon looked as surprised as Anderson felt.

Anderson, Fredericks, and Nicole Shepard ran towards the docking bay. He heard Talon spraying pistol fire down the corridor, forcing the kids back. He ran through the airlock and realized that Nicole was still standing there, staring at Talon. The turian looked back to her.

"They're going to torture him," Nicole whispered.

"C'mon, child, we've got to—"

Nicole raised her pistol and shot Talon in the head. As his body fell to the ground, Anderson could've sworn the turian was smiling. Nicole followed Anderson to the _Windsor_. The door slid shut. The ship fell sideways into space and tried its best to leave that evil place behind.

XXX

"Could you tell me your name, please?" Chakwas asked. Nicole Shepard was sitting on her operating table, still wearing her torn Shadowhill clothes. Anderson had described the girl to her, but Chakwas could hardly believe that scar. Like a crescent moon on her face.

"Nicole Shepard, ma'am."

"Could you remove your shirt, please? I understand if you're uncom—" Nicole wasn't, apparently. She removed her shirt and pants without hesitation, leaving her in nothing but her underwear. Chakwas had to hide her shock. The girl's body was a landscape of old wounds. When Chakwas asked her to turn around, she saw three huge scars that stretched from one shoulder to the opposite side of her lower back.

"Dear God," Chakwas whispered.

"Is something wrong?"

"No, sorry. I just—was surprised. Are you hurt at all?"

"No, ma'am."

"If you are, you're allowed to tell me," Chakwas said kindly. For the first time, the girl looked nervous. She swallowed.

"I'm fine, ma'am. Thank you."

"You don't have to be afraid, Nicole. We want to help you—I'm here to help you. I promise. May I run a scan, now? We want to get our own information about you, just to make sure you're healthy and that everything's fine."

Nicole nodded, but she was sweating visibly. She was terrified of doctors, Chakwas realized. Ice settled in Chakwas' stomach and stayed there. The thought of what had been done to this girl, to the other children still on that station, was horrifying. She ran the preliminary scan. Fortunately, it was non-invasive. Eventually they'd need more detailed testing, but Chakwas wanted to give Nicole time to get used to her, first.

"Well, you seem to be just fine, for now. Why don't you go ahead and pull your clothes back on? I think Captain Anderson wanted to show you to your quarters, would you like that?"

"A vessel of this class has no crew or civilian quarters," Nicole said dubiously, as she pulled her shirt over her head. Chakwas smiled.

"Captain Anderson has decided to allow you to use his quarters for the remainder of our trip back to Earth, if you would like to."

Nicole didn't answer. She looked like she wanted to, but she held her tongue.

"Nicole, would it be all right if I took your hand?"

Nicole didn't answer for a long time. She swallowed.

"Okay."

Chakwas took her hand, gently, in hers.

"I know how hard this must be for you, Nicole, but you can trust us. What you saw in Shadowhill, that's not what the Alliance is like. We're going to help you, Nicole."

"Okay."

Chakwas didn't think Nicole quite believed her. Just then, Anderson had arrived at the door to the med bay. Chakwas let him in.

"How're you holding up, kid?"

"Good, sir. I'm sorry about Rodriguez."

"Me too. Want to come with me? Or does Chakwas still need you?"

"She's free to go, Anderson," Chakwas said, choosing her words carefully.

"Perfect! Would you like to see more of the ship? Or do you think you've got time to talk?"

"I can talk," Nicole said. She slid off of the operating table and followed Anderson. She was tall for her age, but Chakwas wondered how much she'd really grown up. Those monsters had had her for six years. She'd learned to shoot a gun in that time, but according to Anderson, she'd never had a conversation with anyone until she'd found a turian prisoner dying in a cell. She hoped that girl would make something of herself, find a future. She deserved one.

XXX

"What do you think?" Anderson asked, gesturing to his quarters. It was just a small room with a bed, desk, and open area for receiving guests, but Nicole regarded it with wide-eyed wonder.

"It's very large, sir," Nicole said quietly.

"You can take a seat, if you want." Nicole sat on the edge of the bed, somewhat uneasily. Anderson took the chair from his desk and sat opposite her.

"Sir, why would you give me your quarters? They're for the captain."

"I figure you've earned it."

"Thank you, sir." Nicole closed her eyes, and took three quick, deep breaths. When she opened her eyes and looked back at Anderson, she seemed slightly more comfortable. "I do like it here. It reminds me of my old house on Mindoir. It was prefabricated according to Alliance specs, so it was kind of similar, a little." Her hands had tightened around the bedsheets, twisting the fabric in her grasp.

"If you need anything, Nicole, I want you to know you can count on me. All right?"

"Why? You saved me already. That's enough," Nicole whispered.

"Not really. Shadowhill … whatever they became, they were funded by the Alliance. I'm going to level with you. I don't know what the brass' reaction to all this will be. But I promise you, Nicole, I'm going to make sure you're not left alone."

"Thank you, sir."

"My name is David. You can call me that, if you like."

"Wouldn't that be inappropriate?"

"Well, Nicole, technically you're not an enlisted officer," Anderson said with a smile. "You can be one if you want to be, in time. But for now, David is fine."

Nicole turned away from him. She looked back, and her face was a mask again.

"I killed Talon."

Anderson didn't know what to say.

"I killed him. But I had to, or they would've done awful things to him. I know they would have." Her rigid posture slumped and her eyes slid from Anderson, towards her feet. She was shaking, like there was too much energy being stored beneath her skin.

"It was the brave thing to do. I don't know many people who could have done that."

"I don't know what to do." Bare panic twisted her features, the mask on her face evaporated, and for once Anderson could see the child. He reached out a hand, palm up. She took it. Her grip was painfully tight, but he didn't mind.

"That's okay. That's … okay."

She hugged him. Too surprised to do anything else, he hugged her back, patting her back gently.

"It's going to be okay," he promised. "You did good, child. You did good."

"Thank you, sir."

XXX

When they returned to Earth, Nicole was transferred to an Alliance facility—a public military academy, at Anderson's request—where she was run through a gamut of psychological and physical evaluations. Again, as a favour to Anderson, Chakwas was allowed to oversee and personally conduct most of the tests. Anderson, meanwhile, had to give his report to Hackett.

"You've seen my report, Admiral. This place is a goddamn black stain on the heart of the Alliance."

"I agree, but it's not that simple. We sent in recovery crews when you informed us of what was going on, but by the time they got there, the place was empty. As far as the brass is concerned, it's a nice, convenient excuse to pretend the whole thing never happened." Hackett didn't sound very pleased. They were in Hackett's office, not far from the training academy where Nicole was being evaluated. Anderson found himself wishing he could check in on the kid.

"You've got to be kidding me! That psychopath is still out there, with four of those kids still under his thumb! He's not going to just let it drop, Hackett, you know that!"

"I do," Hackett agreed, "But Command says otherwise. They think the threat he presents to the Alliance's integrity is more significant than any tactical danger he might pose. I've managed to keep them from bringing the kid into this, but there were voices calling to quietly deposit her on some colony world."

"You want to send that girl to a colony to shut her up? She was the only survivor from Mindoir, and she endured god-knows-what at the hand of an _Alliance-funded _program!"

Hackett, to his credit, responded calmly.

"I agree with you, Anderson. I've been able to prevent that much. Apparently, the girl still wants to join the Alliance. It's obviously the only thing she knows … maybe it'll be good for her. We send her off, she'll find a way to put her talents to use, and that use might not be that noble."

"You haven't met her. I told this kid I'd save her and she was worrying about a turian prisoner instead. She's got a good heart, Hackett, despite what she's been through."

"I believe you. Whether or not she's actually Alliance material, though … like you said, she's been through a pair of hells. That has to mess someone up."

"Just promise me she'll be given a chance."

"She will. Is this personal, Anderson?"

"I got her out of there. I guess you could say I feel responsible for her. Someone in this damn army ought to be."

"You've made your point, Anderson. That'll be all. If you want to visit her, go ahead. But do it quick. I may have something else I need you for."

"Yes, sir."

XXX

The training facilities at the Vancouver Military Academy reminded Nicole of Shadowhill, in a strange, almost fond way. There were windows, and fewer locked doors, but there were also lots of corridors, and testing rooms, and a few gymnasiums. Chakwas had brought her in. Nicole was grateful for that. She wasn't afraid of unfamiliar faces, but she couldn't help but feel on her guard. Chakwas first took her to a testing room outfitted with a treadmill and a weight machine. It was so tame that Nicole nearly laughed.

"I'm going to attach this monitor to your wrist, all right?" Chakwas asked. Nicole nodded and extended her arm. Chakwas wrapped a small strap around Nicole's wrist and tapped the console at her desk. "All right, that's good. The first thing I'd like you to do is run a few laps on the treadmill, if that's all right? Just to get a basic reading of your cardiovascular conditioning."

"Right." Nicole half-expected some hidden test but … no, Chakwas really had meant what she said. She quickly ramped up the speed of the treadmill when it became clear that Nicole could run for hours without breaking a sweat. After a long while, her lungs started to burn and her muscles tired, but that pain was so normal that Nicole barely even noticed. Chakwas stopped the machine after an hour. Nicole was surprised. She dismounted the treadmill and stood at attention, her breathing slightly laboured. She was wearing Alliance sweats—not really that different from Shadowhill clothing—and sweat glued the clothes to her skin.

"Impressive," Chakwas remarked. "Very impressive. We're supposed to do some weight training, next."

"'We'? It'd be pretty funny seeing you doing a benchpress, Doctor."

Chakwas stared at her for a moment. Nicole felt mortified, before Chakwas burst out laughing.

"Well, well, she does have a sense of humour! I'll be damned. But if you think I'm about to push around anything heavier than a pencil, you've got another thing coming."

Nicole obediently went to the weight machine and started running through a variety of the old exercises she'd done at Shadowhill. She was halfway through before she realized Chakwas was staring, her measuring instruments long forgotten.

"Is something wrong, Doctor?"

"Are you hiding a hydraulic pump in those arms of yours?"

"No, ma'am. As I understand it Shadowhill developed a specialized gene therapy to enhance muscular density." Nicole knew that she was visibly athletic, far more than even most Alliance soldiers, but she was stronger even than that.

"Well … carry on, then, Hercules."

Nicole grinned, in spite of herself. She had no idea who Hercules was, though she thought he might have something to do with early human myth. In the precious few times she'd been allowed to learn about cultural history or mythology, she'd always gravitated to the turians, and the asari … _especially _the asari.

When the testing was done, Chakwas escorted Nicole to a private room, in what seemed to be guest quarters.

"If you need anything, you have mine and Captain Anderson's contact details, all right?" Nicole nodded. After so long in Shadowhill, having two people who genuinely seemed to care about her felt strange, dreamlike. That was nothing compared to what she felt once Chakwas left. She looked around her room. It was no bigger than Anderson's quarters on the _Windsor_, but the one feature that drew Nicole's attention was a console at a desk. It was hooked up to the extranet. She hadn't been allowed access in years. When she reached out to touch it, she flinched backwards, as though afraid of it.

Instead she sat back on the bed, messing with her omnitool. She knew she could access the extranet using the tool, as well, but somehow that was less terrifying. Exhaustion crept up on her, and since sleeping was the easiest way to escape the unknown, she drifted off, atop her bedsheets, the sunlight shining into her windows.


	4. Chapter 4

After a few dozen more tests, Nicole's request to be admitted to the Vancouver Military Academy was accepted. There was some difficulty in determining that she was who she said she was, but luckily a DNA match proved that she was the same Nicole Shepard whose mother had registered her with Alliance databases when she'd been born. It was, Chakwas explained, a method to find lost children. It was also the only thing that had escaped Gabreau's purge of her identity. Anderson was away on some mission or another, but before he left, he promised to keep in touch.

On the first day, she was woken at 4 AM and told to "hustle." Apparently Nicole's definition of "hustling" differed vastly from everyone else's, because she was ready and waiting in the training field before a single soul was there. When the other students shuffled towards her to make a line, she felt resentful eyes glaring at her.

Their commanding officer came and gave some sort of lecture about military discipline and protocol, all of which sounded rather tame, to her. The officer then had them drop and do push-ups, run a lap around the track, and perform various short-burst exercises which to Nicole were about as difficult as breathing. The other recruits were wheezing with exhaustion by the end of it. Nicole realized that these people really _were _trainees; they'd never had a day's military training in their life. It made her feel distinctly uncomfortable.

After some more of this, which reduced the other recruits to gasping, resentful wrecks, they were sent back to the barracks. Nicole didn't have her room in the building where Chakwas had tested her anymore, but she didn't mind. Its vastness had been intimidating. The showers were in a large room with barely private stalls. At first, Nicole was nervous. She was used to lacking privacy, but she wasn't used to so many people, people she felt like she had to impress. She at least had to convince them she was human. What would they think when they saw all her scars? Even Chakwas had been surprised, and she was an Alliance medic.

For a moment, she froze. The walls seemed to slant in towards her.

But then she realized that no one was looking at her. The other girls all felt nearly as awkward as she did, apparently. That was oddly comforting. A cursory glance revealed that none of them were nearly as scarred as Nicole, but that was okay. They were all trying not to look at anyone else, which suited Nicole just fine. She went to the shower, cleaned herself in the two minutes allotted her, then dried herself off, dressed, and returned to the barracks as a couple girls complained about the short showers.

This, Nicole reflected, was going to be a very strange way to live.

XXX

The first time they assembled for weapons training, they were just using pistols. Even though a consistent group of officers were their trainers, Nicole found she could never remember their faces. It was force of habit. She'd never had to remember an instructor's face. They were all just authority figures, void of identity and brimming with the potential for brutality. As she placed perfect shots in targets down-range, she tried to dedicate the firing instructor's face, name, and rank to memory. She was Commander Alison Xi, a short, stocky woman with handsome features. Her lectures were harsh and stern, which meant nothing to Nicole as they only contained information she'd learned when she was twelve years old. The young man standing next to her was growing increasingly flustered as his shots kept missing his targets entirely. Nicole took pity on him and muttered, out of the side of her mouth,

"Targeting computer."

"What?"

"It's busted. In your gun." Nicole wasn't sure how Commander Xi would respond to her helping the other trainee, but she knew that at Shadowhill such behaviour would have earned her a week in a torture cell.

"How can you tell?" Nicole wanted to strike the kid.

"You see that _big_, blinking light on the side of your barrel?"

"_Oh_. Uh, what do I do about it?" He looked at her helplessly. Nicole tried to remember that this might have been the first time he'd even touched a gun. With an exasperated sigh she laid her pistol down and snatched the gun out of his hand.

"Give it here." She opened her omnitool's interface, tapped a command into the device, then returned it to the other recruit. The light had stopped blinking.

"Um, thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"Shepard! At attention!"

Nicole turned about and did as ordered.

"Were you tampering with that recruit's weapon?"

"No, sir! I was fixing it, sir!"

"Is that a fact?"

The boy intervened on Nicole's behalf.

"Uh, yeah, sir, my gun was goin' nuts and she fixed it."

"All right. Well done."

And that was that. Nicole almost made a friend, that day, but the boy never said another word to her. It took her too long to wonder why, too long to realize that she might have said something herself, and longer still for her to realize the truth:

They were scared of her. When she looked another recruit in the eye, they'd look away. The less restrained ones visibly flinched. Her instructors were impressed, but they didn't trust her, either. She wondered if they knew where she'd come from. Shadowhill clung to her bones, stripping her of the right to start anew. People rarely looked her in the face.

Every now and again, the other recruits would call their parents, and some even visited them in person on days off. When Nicole had free time, she barely knew what to do with herself. She studied asari poetry in the meanwhile. When she saw the pictures of asari poets—who were luxuriously dressed, even scandalously by human standards—she flushed and had to look away. She didn't know why. New emotions had always been frightening, since they were almost always accompanied by someone at Shadowhill stamping them out. The only thing she'd successfully hidden from Gabreau was her old turian poem. Asari poetry was beautiful—the word _beauty _stuck in her mind and stayed there—but she thought she liked the turian stuff better. Asari poetry tended to be more narrative. Turian poetry could be interpreted any of a dozen ways, since turian poets had stopped using any punctuation centuries ago. They didn't even use line breaks.

The only pauses and meaning that existed were your own. Something in Nicole liked that.

Chakwas checked in on her every couple of weeks, mostly to check on her medically. She said they were confident that she would be fine, but also that they didn't have the slightest grasp on the full extent of Shadowhill's program.

"Frankly, Nicole, the sort of gene therapy—if we can even _call _it that—which they subjected you to is unheard of. Normally such a procedure can take decades to have an effect, but here you stand, fitter than most marines ten years your senior." Chakwas had taken a small vial of blood while she'd been talking. Nicole wasn't a fan of needles, but she was used to them, and she trusted Chakwas. She thought she did, anyway. She wasn't sure what trust felt like, but she wasn't afraid when Chakwas was around.

"Sorry about that. I shouldn't have to do that too many more times, but the Alliance wants to be very sure."

"I understand."

Chakwas paused as she was packing away her medical supplies.

"I'm going to be leaving soon, Nicole."

"Oh. Okay."

"I'll miss seeing you, Nicole, but I really do belong on a starship. And besides, I can't exactly refuse orders."

"Yeah. Doctor? Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"Have you ever met an asari? They were the only aliens I never saw at Shadowhill," Nicole explained, perhaps too hastily.

"No, I can't imagine they'd have an easy time keeping an asari. They're mostly all biotics, which is a complication."

"But have you met one?"

Dr. Chakwas smiled knowingly.

"I've met more than one. If you ever visit the Citadel, you won't be able to go ten feet without bumping into a blue ass."

Despite her best efforts, Nicole felt heat creeping into her cheeks. It was strange and she didn't like it even a small bit.

"When you do wind up on a ship yourself, I'm sure you'll meet a few, too. Just try not to blush so hard then, all right?"

"Right."

Chakwas reached out to hug her, slowly, so that Nicole knew what was coming. Nicole was grateful, and hugged her back.

Then she was gone.

XXX

In the next two years, Nicole rarely saw Chakwas or Anderson, but they both kept in contact whenever they could. Nicole read each of their messages, memorized them, and encrypted them on her omnitool using code she'd invented. She thought of it as her lockbox, deep in the digital recesses of her omnitool, where she could keep her memories safe. Anderson always said he was proud of her, that she'd make a hell of a soldier once she was graduated. He implied more than once that he thought Nicole didn't need basic training—but also that she couldn't officially join the Navy until she was eighteen, so there was no getting around it.

She never did make many friends, but in time people stopped regarding her with so much fear. Her instructors seemed to like her, though they maintained professional distance, as always.

Still, she'd never been happier. Turian poetry comforted her when she was alone with nothing but herself. There was ease in knowing to a certainty what your schedule would be the next day; at Shadowhill, they had always kept her guessing. There would be days where she wasn't fed, or given anything to drink, or neither. Once it had gone on so long that she thought she might die of thirst, before they threw a jug of water into her cell. That didn't happen at the Vancouver Military Academy, it _never _happened, and for that simple courtesy of ever present drinking water, Nicole was grateful.

When it was time for her to graduate, both Anderson and Chakwas arranged to be there. New emotions still set her off her guard, but standing before a crowd of people and knowing that two of them were there for her made her feel something wonderful deep inside of her, something that reminded her of her lockbox, and her brother's name, and blue turian eyes.

Later, Anderson and Chakwas took her to a restaurant, a small but nice café near the Academy. They were still in their dress blues. Anderson was eating an old Earth dish he affectionately called "really shitty pizza." It looked like someone had melted a triangle of cheese onto a plate, but he ate it with impressive skill. Chakwas, like Nicole, had opted for the restaurant's specialty, which was a vegetable soup.

"God I missed this crap," Anderson muttered. Chakwas spared Nicole an amused glance while Anderson managed his messy meal. Nicole focused on her soup. "Well, congratulations, marine. You made it."

"Thank you, sir."

"Forget the 'sir' for now. You're probably gonna get sick of it one day when you don't have a choice in the matter," Anderson said, pointing at her with his slice of pizza.

"All right," Nicole responded, taking another spoonful of soup. She thought it was delicious, but then again, she thought military rations were delicious. She'd never been prone to long conversations.

"So." Chakwas shared a conspiratorial grin with Anderson. "Are you going to tell her, or shall I?"

"Technically, Doctor, you're not supposed to know about it."

"Fair enough."

"All right. Nicole, I've got a bit of a surprise for you."

"Yes, s—Anderson?"

"God, Nicole, don't do that. Call me David."

"Never could get into the habit, sir."

Anderson stared at her. Chakwas was snorting into her drink.

"She's making fun of you, you old fart. Get on with it." Nicole only raised an eyebrow.

"Damn, you've got the best poker face I've ever seen."

"Thank you, sir." Nicole permitted herself a grin.

"Well, I've been talking to your instructors, and they all agree that you're no standard recruit, and it'd be a waste of everyone's time to just put you into standard rotation. So, if you agree to it, we want to hook you up with Commander Delilah Vargas' special forces unit." Anderson hesitated, and for a moment Nicole thought she saw displeasure pass over his face—but it was only a moment. "You'll be promoted to 2nd Lieutenant, and your talents will be made full use of. I've spoken with Hackett and your instructors and given your … experience, we figure you more than qualify for N1 rank at least. It's a little unprecedented, but anyone who's seen you knows that you're no ensign."

Anderson opened his mouth as though to say something else, but he occupied himself by eating more pizza. Nicole could barely believe what she was hearing. She had no idea who Delilah Vargas was, but she'd expected another half-decade of routine grunt work before she got the chance at anything like this.

"What'd'you say?"

"I say that sounds pretty damn good, sir." Nicole's voice was shaky.

"You're sure?"

Nicole nodded.

"Absolutely."

"All right. We'll make it happen. Hell, one day we might even wind up on a ship together."

Nicole smiled.

"I'd like that."

XXX

Every time she'd boarded a starship, for as long as she could remember—which, Nicole reflected, wasn't very long, and didn't include a great many starships—Nicole had always found a quiet place of the ship and hid herself away until the voyage was done. Ships were not places to stay, they were just storage bins between lives. Nicole barely remembered her passage aboard the _SSV Einstein_, but she knew that the place she was actually going to was another ship: a small frigate named the _Baghdad._ If she weren't so used to the unknown, she would've been paralyzed with fear.

As it was, she was merely silenced by it. She'd taken up residence at a table in the meal hall, facing a window looking out into space. Stars broke the blackness of space with comforting persistence. A meal had gone cold on the table in front of her.

She heard footsteps approaching her, the sure and sharp clack of military boots against a metal floor. Turning around, she saw a tall, black-haired woman dressed in Alliance casualwear. Her face was marked by a sardonic grin, bright brown eyes, and dark, racially indeterminate features.

"This seat taken?"

Nicole shook her head and watched as the woman sat down opposite her. She still had issues with people being too close to her, and she was almost as mad at herself as she was uncomfortable. She'd _gotten out_. She was an Alliance marine now, going to join a special forces team. Things were supposed to be different, better.

But she still flinched when the woman sat down next to her.

"Pleasure to meet you. I'm guessing you don't recognize me, huh?" The woman was still grinning. Nicole tried not to sound too robotic when she replied,

"I'm afraid not."

"Well, I'm Commander Delilah Vargas." The woman extended a hand across the table. Nicole shook it in a daze.

"Sorry, sir! Lieutenant Nicole Shepard—"

"Yeah, yeah, save the formal crap," Delilah muttered. She waved a hand and turned to look out the porthole. "Quite a sight, huh? Look out one of these windows and you're staring at half of everything."

"Yes, sir."

"I said save it. We're not on the _Baghdad _yet. For now just stick with Vargas. Never could stand my first name. _Delilah_." She snorted. "Damn my fool of a mother. Name like a goddamn flower."

"Right."

"Well, they told me you weren't much of a talker," Vargas said. Though her demeanour was casual, her posture, her dress, everything was strict Alliance discipline. "Tell me, Shepard, you have any hobbies?"

"Not really," Nicole admitted. She felt stupid saying it.

"Y'know, things you do for fun?" Vargas prompted. Nicole actually smiled.

"It's funny, someone else said almost those exact same words to me a long time ago. Didn't have much of an answer then, either."

"Fair enough." Vargas shrugged her shoulders and leaned forward onto the table. Nicole, out of reflex, pulled away. Embarrassment and regret struck her like a spike in the gut, but it was too late for that now. "I wanted to find you and have a talk." Vargas grinned again, and though Nicole had a predisposed mistrust of people who grinned too often, it seemed innocent, even playful, on the Commander's face. "You're a bit of an unusual case."

Nicole hesitated. She didn't know how much Vargas knew about her. Vargas continued.

"I'll save you the trouble of wondering. I know Anderson, and he personally recommended you to me. Promised I wouldn't get any trouble out of you, too, which I'm going to take on good faith." She raised her eyebrows, as though in challenge. Nicole still didn't say anything, so Vargas went on. "He also told me the story about you, or at least some of it. Didn't believe it at first, 'till he showed me his report. Don't think I was supposed to see that, but he wanted me to know what I was getting myself into with you. If half of what he's told me is true it sounds like I'm getting a hell of a soldier."

"I hope so, Commander Vargas."

"I suppose about now you're expecting some speech about how I think you're an up-jumped little shit who didn't earn her rank and has no business running special ops, huh?" Again Vargas' eyebrows shot up. She made full use of her expressive features. "Well you're not gonna get any of that from me. We'll see how you do with the squad, and that'll be that. I've just got one question. Do you want to tell the rest of the squad about who you are? Or keep it between you and me? I can't promise they won't ask questions, maybe figure some of the truth out … but if you don't want anyone to know, I won't say a word."

Nicole was stunned. She stared at Vargas, protected by the emotionless blankness that had become her default expression.

"I'd rather … Commander, if it's all right, I'd rather it stayed between you and me."

Vargas nodded seriously.

"You've got it, Shepard."

After a moment, Delilah left Nicole alone. She looked back out to the stars and wondered what was out there. She wondered how many other stowaways were slipping through the darkness in storage bins. How many planets there were populated by people, just living their lives, whatever those lives were.

For a moment, she almost felt that she could reach out and touch them, through the cold glass, through the space and years between them. She saw a pair of blue turian eyes in two distant stars, and she wondered which one of those stars he might have gone to if she hadn't killed him.

XXX

Nicole had mostly been aboard huge frigates, mammoth vessels like the _Einstein_ that were the size of a minor city. It made her think of just how small Shadowhill had really been; a collection of cells and hallways and scientists' labs. She had been raised there. All of Shadowhill was maybe the size of the _Einstein's _gym.

Mercifully, the _Baghdad _was much smaller. You could walk around the whole thing in maybe fifteen minutes. There were no personal quarters for crew, just sleeping pods. Somehow, Nicole found that very comforting. What surprised her at first was how few combat-ready soldiers there were aboard; sure, there were technicians and pilots, but it was only Commander Vargas, three other marines, and Shepard herself who were actually fitted for away missions. Boarding with her, Vargas told Shepard to stash her things in her personal locker; Shepard didn't bother mentioning that her only real belonging was her omnitool.

Vargas first brought all the marines into her quarters. Neither of them said anything until their commanding officer did, but Nicole could tell that the other three knew each other.

"At ease, marines," Vargas said. Nicole was starting to suspect that this was something of a refrain of hers. The other three relaxed. "All right, this is Lieutenant Nicole Shepard." Vargas pointed at her. "Specialization in infiltration, tech hacking, and sniper rifles. Correct?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, I'll tell you, that's bloody fantastic, because not one of these three geniuses knows their way around an omnitool. 1st Lieutenant Andrew Satrapi, N3—" Vargas pointed to a tall, dark-haired man with full lips and bright eyes, "Staff Lieutenant Eve Barrows, N4—" she pointed to a short woman with a pixie-like face and a close-shaved afro, "and Gunnery Chief Sean Malick, N2." The last man was at a height with Eve Barrows, blonde-haired and pale-skinned.

The three each extended a hand for Nicole to shake as they were introduced. Satrapi looked vaguely amused, Barrows looked skeptical, and Malick had the sort of eager puppy-dog face that made you think he'd recently broken something. He shook her hand the most vigorously.

"Nice to meet you, Lieutenant! I've heard a couple stories about you from my sister—she was at the academy when you were. Said you were a notoriously tough nut to crack." His smile indicated he took that as something of a challenge.

"What was her name?" Nicole asked, knowing full well she wouldn't know her. Nicole had never gotten used to remembering names.

"Andrea Malick. Ringing any bells?"

"Afraid not."

"Ah, I'll show you a picture sometime."

"Not to interrupt…." Vargas began. She sounded more amused than frustrated. Malick grinned sheepishly and stepped back in line with the other soldiers. Nicole was struck with the awkward choice of staying where she was, between Vargas and the marines, or joining them. She decided to join them. She was supposed to be a part of this team, after all. "The Lieutenant is here on my request. I needed a fifth body for our next mission and when I asked Anderson, he recommended her.

"I'm gonna get straight to it. We've been assigned to visit a corporate icecube called Noveria. Any of you heard of it?"

"A corporate planet run by the Noveria Development Corporation, a conglomerate formed by several research-and-development companies to conduct research outside of Citadel space. They rent labs out to private companies for a fee and govern themselves. Security is provided by in-house security squads, roughly equal parts ex-military or mercenary forces." Nicole rattled off information she'd memorized years ago, in Shadowhill. She was amazed at the clarity of the recollection.

"Yeah, what she said," Vargas added, a wry grin curving her lips. "Well, the nature of their work means that, _officially_, the Alliance can't do shit in their backyard."

"Officially," Satrapi repeated, without enthusiasm. He had managed to perfect an expression between 'bored' and 'amused'.

"Doesn't give them the right to 'unofficially' kidnap and test on civilians, though, which is what we suspect them of doing," Vargas added darkly. Backs stiffened. Grins faded. One by one the expressions of the other three soldiers became copies of Nicole's deadly serious stare. "We're going to go there, see what we can learn, and should we discover any violation of Citadel space civilians, we're under orders to retrieve them and gather intel on who was doing what to them. The Corporation might not know what's going on—they'll certainly say so if we ever find proof, anyway. Discretion is priority here."

"Do we know anything about the layout of their facilities, sir?" Nicole asked. Vargas shrugged.

"Not more than you can get from the extranet. Officially, we're visiting as scouts for the Alliance, looking for gene therapy programs. Shepard, Malick, and myself will take up residence as initial scouts. After two days, Satrapi and Barrows are going to enter as a second unit, supposedly checking out other companies to force a better price. In reality we're going to be chasing down separate leads about the missing colonists."

"What leads are those, Commander?" Barrows asked. Her voice was deeper than Nicole had expected.

"Almost nothing. Just that we know several colonists in neighboring systems have vanished, and that forty days ago, this message was sent out from Noveria on a private channel." Vargas activated something on her omnitool, which broadcasted a recorded message:

_"Help ... please. Can't … no food or water. Keeping us her—…—orture. Please send someone. My name—"_

That was it. The message was so degraded that it was barely decipherable, but it told a straightforward story.

"Linguistic analysts have determined the voice was either human or asari," Vargas said, "And our specialists don't think it's a fake. We might not find anyone still alive, but we _will _find out what's been going on, and that's a promise. We arrive at Noveria in ten hours. I'd recommend you all get some shut-eye."

Vargas dismissed them, and they all fanned out of the office. Malick seemed like he wanted to take Nicole aside, but before he did Barrows, the short woman who hadn't said much, asked Nicole to talk. They went by the sleeping pods and spoke in a whisper—three crewmembers were sleeping in pods at the far end of the room.

"You have a question, Staff Lieutenant?"

"As a matter of fact, I do. Look, the Commander says she trusts you, and that's good enough for me. But all it took was looking at your public record to find out you're fresh out of basic training. You're eighteen. How the hell are you an N1 at your age when you've never even been to N-School?"

"Extenuating circumstances," Nicole replied dryly. Barrows scoffed.

"Suppose I deserved that. Just keep an eye out. I don't know why you're here but field work isn't like training—"

"I'm familiar with the field," Nicole replied, more than a little curtly. Barrows' eyes darted to Nicole's scar. She sighed.

"I just hope you know what you're getting yourself into."

"I do," Nicole promised. Something about her tone seemed to set Barrows at ease, and the woman finally smiled.

"All right, Lieutenant. I'll wait and see for myself."

Barrows left her standing alone, outside Vargas' office. Exhaustion fell about her like a blinding shroud, and though she had not slept in a long time it was not weariness that enveloped her, but rather the certain knowledge that too much had passed before her in too short a time. She went to one of the sleeping pods and sealed herself inside, locked herself away in a storage cabinet until she was ready to face the prospect that she may well have to live again.


	5. Chapter 5

"This is bullshit, Hackett, and you know it." Anderson's voice was terse, angry, and more than a little disrespectful. Hackett's eyes narrowed as he examined the Alliance Captain from across his desk, but he didn't say anything about it.

"Yeah, Anderson. It's politics. But the girl is getting what she wants—"

"She's being tossed around like a toy! Giving her N1 like that—"

"What, you're telling me she can't handle it?" Hackett asked dubiously.

"Of course she can handle it. That's not what this is about, sir!" Anderson had to remind himself he was speaking to a superior officer. Hackett had a way of maintaining authority without seeming lofty or self-important; but you didn't want to cross him, either.

"I know. It's the smart move, from the Admiralty's perspective. Put a soldier like that in general rotation, out of basic training, and people would talk. But Special Forces don't talk—they know better. They might be pissed that a kid is in their unit, but they won't start blabbing about it to some news organization."

"They're trying to _hide _her. As though she's at fault for Shadowhill!"

"I know. I don't like it either. But for now there's nothing we can do, Anderson. In a way, this might be good for her. She'll thrive in Vargas' unit, and she won't have to face questions about her past."

"Not from Vargas, anyway," Anderson muttered. He knew Vargas—he'd been the one who had made sure Nicole had wound up in Vargas' unit. "I know. It makes sense. But Shadowhill was funded by the Alliance, Shadowhill took her childhood away, and now we're trying to, what, pretend it never happened? It doesn't sit right with me."

"Anderson, to be frank, you've done enough for the kid. She's not your daughter. More to the point, she's damn-near invincible. Do you know what kind of psyche it takes to _not _have a complete breakdown after being through what she has?"

"Yeah." Anderson looked out Hackett's window, to see Earth's brilliant sun shining out over Vancouver's pristine streets. "That's what worries me."

XXX

Nicole woke when the _Baghdad _broke the barrier of Noveria's atmosphere and left space behind. The ship's systems compensated quickly for the planetary gravity, but she could feel the difference, somehow, in her bones. The _Baghdad _was caught in Noveria's pull, falling to the icy surface of the planet. Nicole found her way to a viewport and looked down at the sea of white, an oppressive blanket of snow masking inhospitable mountain peaks.

_If I were trying to set up a science colony outside Citadel space, I suppose I'd make sure no one wanted to visit, too_, Nicole thought.

"Hey, Shepard." It was Vargas. "Quite a view down there, huh?"

"Yeah. I keep thinking how hard it would be to hide something in all that snow."

"Well, you'd be surprised," Vargas murmured. "They're not going to let us bring our hardsuits or weapons onto Noveria. You're supposed to be our infiltration specialist—I was wondering if you had any ideas about concealed weapons?"

"No point. We can just scavenge and assemble weaponry on-site. Getting weapons past their checkpoints will be impossible, but once we're planetside it should be much simpler." Nicole's mouth was moving strictly on auto-pilot. Vargas smiled approvingly.

"Good." Vargas leaned against the wall and looked out the window. Her jawline was exquisite. Nicole blinked and tried to dismiss the foreign thought, but her brain refused to co-operate. A blush crawled up her cheeks and threatened to betray her, but she turned away and managed to suppress the reaction in time. "Anything on your mind, Lieutenant?"

"Not really," Nicole blurted hastily. She looked rather pointedly down at Noveria, trying to avoid Vargas' face.

"I remember my first mission. I was scared shitless," Vargas admitted. She laughed at herself and turned her back to Noveria, leaning against the wall. "Then again, you've got a bit more seasoning on you than I did. I was just a pissed off kid who was still having trouble remembering which end of the gun you hold."

Nicole didn't know what to say to that. Cleaning, assembling, regulating, and shooting—yes, definitely shooting—guns had been a part of her for so long that it was second nature. Sniper rifles yielded their secrets far more easily than any human being Nicole had met.

"Barrows was asking about you. I told her that we'll see what you're made of down on Noveria." Nicole glanced at Vargas, before the Commander continued. "She's worried about you. Afraid you're some kid who got promoted for political reasons who's gonna get their head shot off. There's no danger of that, is there?"

Nicole grinned, her lips curving just slightly so that they didn't warp her scar.

"No, ma'am."

"Thought so. Well, I should go talk to the others. See you on the other side."

Nicole's first thought was '_Of what? The docking ramp?'_ but by then Vargas was gone. Nicole was left to try and reorganize her thoughts in Vargas' wake, a prospect which, at the very least, had a pleasant view.

XXX

The staff at Noveria customs seemed prepared to keep Vargas and her crew detained for hours, but—much to Nicole's surprise—Malick managed to talk his way through with such unrelenting good cheer that they were forced to grant them entrance. To Nicole's relief, Port Hanshan was composed of broad, open spaces, the floor and walls a uniform chrome steel. Fountains and pleasant little gardens were placed at regular intervals, the obvious results of somebody's planning committee. Hanshan was populated by individuals of nearly every race—she saw several salarians, humans, a few turians, and a couple elcor walking around. All of them seemed preoccupied with something.

"We're looking for a Rakesh Malhotra," Vargas muttered. Nicole frowned; something about that name was familiar. "He works for a company called New Dawn Pharmaceuticals, supposed to be their PR monkey."

She led them to a lounge and bar area. Malick didn't say anything, but he seemed nervous. Vargas took them over to a table where a single man was seated. His cropped black hair was streaked with a little gray, and he seemed a touch past middle age, but he still looked healthy and fit. He waved cordially and smiled without effort. Vargas took a seat opposite him and indicated that Malick and Shepard should follow.

"Commander Vargas! I've been expecting you!" Malhotra's manner was smooth, pleasant, the oiled machinery of a lifelong politician. Nicole felt a memory pushing at the edge of her consciousness, threatening to break her focus. She pushed the nagging feeling away. "I assume your cohorts are … business partners?"

"The Alliance, for some reason, decided that the next batch of gene therapy should not be left to my _sole _discretion." Vargas returned Malhotra's slick smile with her own lopsided one, a grin so casual it could have been an accident. "They're crewmembers from my ship, that's all. Showin' them the ropes."

"Certainly. Rakesh Malhotra, at your service." He extended a hand for Vargas to shake.

"You know my name already, so I'll only say this once: never call me Delilah." Vargas said it as a joke, but her smile didn't meet her eyes.

"Of course, Commander. Of course. Now, I've prepared several information packages for you—"

"These wouldn't happen to be the same packages I can download from the extranet, would they?" Vargas' teeth glittered like ice in her smile. "Because I've already read those."

Rakesh returned the documents to a satchel beside his chair.

"Fair point. So, what is it that you want, exactly?"

"Proof that your 'fast and reliable retention rates' are more than advertising jargon, for example. I'll need to see proof that your enhancements have taken hold and provided substantial improvement over the MarsGene line."

"Sounds reasonable." Rakesh nodded. "I'll need to contact my superiors and schedule a visit to our labs, of course. Arranging transportation on Noveria's never easy, but if we make it clear it's for a sales call, then I'm sure we can speed things along. Do you have lodgings for the night? Returning to your ship would necessitate _two _passes through security, and frankly I doubt even you could endure such trauma."

"Thank you for your concern," Vargas replied coolly. "I suppose we'll need passes of some sort?"

"Oh, yes, for visitors. Send your man to see an officer at the customs desk, that should get things straightened away. It'll just take a while." Malick audibly groaned, and Rakesh only smiled. "Sorry, friend, that is what comes of seniority."

Malick jerked a thumb at Nicole.

"I'm _her _senior," he said piteously. Rakesh's grin did not fade; Nicole's expression remained imperceptible. Her hands were folded in her lap, beneath the table, out of Rakesh's sight.

"Perhaps, friend, but something tells me you will wind up waiting in that line, anyway."

"All right. Let's conclude this little get-together before you send Malick into a panic attack," Vargas drawled. She got to her feet and shook Malhotra's hand again. "Pleasure to be doing business with you."

"The feeling is mutual. If you will permit me one question?"

"Shoot."

"I am familiar with Lieutenant Malick here, but I'm afraid your intimidating friend is a mystery to me. Might I beg an introduction?"

"New member of the team," Vargas replied gruffly. She glanced at Nicole, who had just enough time to raise an eyebrow and, just slightly, shake her head. "Lieutenant Alice Carroll."

"Delightful. A pleasure, Lt. Carroll." Nicole nodded in his direction.

When they returned to the quarters readied for them by the NDC, Vargas ordered Malick to go deal with the visitor's passes, then glanced at Nicole.

"You going to tell me what that was about?"

"I know that man," Nicole said, slowly. Her memories of Rakesh brought with them the burning fire of Mindoir, like metal that was too hot to touch for its proximity to a flame. She took a breath and steadied herself, examined past events like a specimen under a microscope. They hadn't happened to her. They'd happened to a ten-year-old girl who had been dead for years. "I'm surprised he's not using an assumed name. He was the one who recruited me for Shadowhill and took me there. I'd almost forgotten him."

"Shit," Vargas spat. "Have you seen him since then?"

"Not before today. I thought he'd left, or maybe even been killed by Gab—by the man who ran Shadowhill." For some reason, Nicole couldn't bring herself to say Gabreau's name. Not aloud. "He came to me on Mindoir, bypassed all the Alliance officials, and arranged all my transportation to that place. He was just the middle man, but still…."

"No, you're right. There's no way it's just a coincidence." Vargas frowned. "It'd make sense that they'd continue to use him in that same capacity, if Shadowhill still exists. Or maybe they've merged with another group. New Dawn is known as having some ties to Terra Firma."

"Shadowhill was definitely about 'humans first,'" Nicole muttered darkly. She didn't elaborate.

"When we get to their labs, we may need to do some digging. They won't let us near anything important, but that's not going to be a problem, is it?"

"No, sir. While we were at the table, I managed a cursory scan of his omnitool." Nicole brought up her omnitool and clicked a button. A projection of a message displayed on the nearby wall. "I did a pass on his recent mail." The message said that something called "XGS-098" was being transferred to the isolation labs via tramway. "XGS and three digits … that was their code for the child soldiers, back at Shadowhill. Here, it sounds like they're talking about cargo, which may mean—"

"The captives are probably there. Jesus…." Vargas looked worried. "I didn't expect your past to hit us in the face so soon. Questions might come up, Shepard. Are you okay with that?"

"I have to be." It was the only answer Nicole could give.

The only one she had ever given.

XXX

Later, when the darkness of night had crept over the blinding surface of Noveria, Malick returned to their quarters and handed them their passes, along with a detailed account of his two hour conversation with the customs guard.

"Apparently each company has its own section of labs, located in remote bases that are connected by tramway. We should be able to access anywhere in New Dawn Pharmaceuticals, once we're there."

"Their security won't be a joke." Vargas' eyes were furrowed as she spoke. "We can't exactly shoot the place up, either. If I shoot someone down there it's as legal as if I did it in a barfight."

"So how _are _we going to get in, then?" Malick asked. Vargas shot him a withering look.

"We _are _Special Forces, Lieutenant. We'll be real quiet." Vargas grinned, and Nicole realized she was only making fun of Malick. Malick had known that from the beginning, from the mildly embarrassed look on his face. "I've notified Barrows and Satrapi. When they get onto the station, they'll arrange to try and meet us there, by whatever means necessary. But we can't delay, not when who-knows-what might be happening to the captives. And the captives are _definitely _there."

"How do we know that, again?" Malick asked, entirely innocently.

"Intel." Vargas' tone rather succinctly indicated that Malick should drop it, which he did. "We can't afford to wait around for the others. We're heading out tomorrow, so it's best we get some shut-eye. Might not have a chance to for a while."

"There's an order I know how to follow!" Malick said cheerfully. He turned a salute into a wave as he went over to his bunk, in another section of the room. Apparently their lodgings were rather old-fashioned; Nicole and Vargas had a section of the room to themselves. To avoid the risk of embarrassing herself, Nicole quickly slipped into bed and shut her eyes.

It was a long time before she slept.

XXX

The smell of burnt flesh infested the landscape like a plague spread by fire. Her brother's body tumbled and fell to the ground, lifeless, empty of the selflessness and nobility and remorseless compassion he had been. Four-eyed monsters sprayed fire and metal.

Nicole ran. Her legs were weak, because they belonged to a child.

Fire pursued her through the dark, revealing that in the absence of shadow the light was cruel. She ran….

A pistol laid on the ground in a soldier's dead hand. A child's hand reached for the weapon.

Screams came and were quickly silenced, until their only echoes were the roar of flamethrowers and firearms.

Gun in hand. Her legs were weak, because they belonged to a child.

Mindoir was grassy fields and prefab housing units laid out between farms. It was all burning to grey and brown. She found one of the houses, hid there, tried to hide in the steel.

Four-eyed monsters prowled the dark. The gun burned in her hand, searing hot from the flames. She had hidden herself in a cabinet where someone's food had been stored. The edge of a meal packet dug into her side.

A monster pulled the door open and laughed. She raised the gun, pulled the trigger, and blood as red as hers blossomed from the monster's forehead.

She ran. Her legs were weak.

Another monster found her and grabbed her. Four eyes; none saw the gun. She shot him in the stomach and ran away while he tried to pick up his insides. She turned around and shot his nose. She would be praised for that; it was, they said, a perfect shot.

She ran, and ran. The fire chased her. The monsters were gone, but still she ran from the flames. As she fell human hands pulled at her and put her in a room.

A man's face. A man named Rakesh who promised her future.

Another man with a beard, terrible and cold.

"Will you give yourself to this program?"

She said yes. She begged them to accept her betrayal.

Blue eyes. A turian's brilliant blue eyes carving a scar into her face.

Talon smiled as he died.

This time she could not run.

XXX

Nicole snapped awake in a cold sweat, thin blankets constricting her. She shoved them off and got a quick glimpse of her heavily scarred, muscular body. She flinched and looked up at the steel ceiling. She listened carefully—Vargas hadn't woken. Her snoring continued uninterrupted, prompting a smile. Gratitude swelled in Nicole's heart for Delilah Vargas' blocked nasal passages.

_Probably be rude to tell her that_, Nicole thought. Rakesh's face bubbled to the surface of her memories and the dream burned the edge of her thoughts. She pulled the blanket back over herself, hiding all her scars, and pounded her pillow into a more comfortable shape. She ordered herself to go to sleep. Her body responded with disobedience. Red hair clung to her face, the colour of blood.

She was shaking. She only realized it as a fact, as though it had been data downloaded from an omnitool. Her hands were trembling and tears, unbidden, ran down her face. On the left side of her face their path was dictated by the curve of her scar. She was furious. Silently, impotently furious.

For the first time she remembered the Alliance soldier who had first found her. She'd never learned her name, but the woman had asked her about the dead batarian nearby, with the shot between his four eyes. The woman had been so damn impressed about the bullet in the batarian's brain that she hadn't thought to ask about the one in his stomach, not even with his guts spilled across the burnt black earth.

There had been no batarian women, though there had surely been a few batarian boys. The one she had killed probably hadn't been much out of his teens. She knew she was supposed to feel guilt somewhere inside, but instead she was hollow. Torn out inside.

_Rohstiik_.

She focused on her breathing. Slowly she regulated her pulse and calmed herself. The cold sweat still clung to her brow but she diverted her attention. She did simple math in her head and expanded the complexity until it hurt to think. Vargas' snoring beat a simple tune that reassured Nicole, and when she slept this time she did not dream.

XXX

"You sleep well, Shepard?" Vargas sounded concerned.

"Yeah. I'm fine."

In the morning, they found room service at their door, asking what they'd like to have for breakfast, "courtesy of New Dawn Pharmaceuticals." Vargas and Malick ordered lightly, perhaps because they weren't used to big meals. Nicole asked for a steak.

"Uh, a steak, ma'am?"

"Yes. Thick." The man hurried off with their meal, giving Vargas and Malick time to stare at Nicole like she had two heads.

"You hungry, Shepard?" Malick asked. "You know we've got meal packets, right?"

"You need a steel knife to cut a steak," Nicole explained simply. Malick smiled appreciatively, while Vargas nodded her approval.

"Damn," Malick muttered, "Wish I'd thought of that. Would've got a steak out of it, too. I figured we were doing the 'hard-bitten Alliance marine' routine."

"You can have mine. Just give me the knife."

As they left their room to find Rakesh again, Malick had a stomach that was a great deal fuller—while Nicole had a freshly cleaned steak knife wrapped in cloth in her left pocket. Rakesh found them in the lounge and brought them to the garage, cheerfully explaining they'd have to drive out to their labs—when Nicole passed through the scanner, she activated a pre-assembled program in her omnitool to trick it into thinking there was nothing in her pocket. It was easy when she was only trying to hide a slim piece of steel.

The transport vehicle—a stripped down combat jeep—was uncomfortably cramped. She was sitting tightly next to Vargas, jammed shoulder to shoulder, while Malick sat opposite them, with Rakesh. The pained look on Malick's face plainly communicated his displeasure at the seating arrangement. Nicole, meanwhile, was trying not to be so aware of the fact that Vargas was sitting right next to her, her elbow unavoidably jammed against Nicole's side.

"Sorry about this, but the transports are courtesy of the NDC, which means that they're slapped together out of military excess." Rakesh grinned. "This was an old Alliance model. You should've seen the gun it had when it was brought in."

"You've been here a while, then?" Vargas asked.

"Oh, yes! I've been with New Dawn from the start, five years ago. This was one of a few vehicles the NDC bought from the Alliance. That was, oh, something like three or four years ago? Damn. I'm getting old!" Rakesh laughed easily, and Malick at least did him the courtesy of a chuckle. Along the way, Malick and Vargas managed to keep up jovial, pointless banter with Rakesh—Nicole instead sat alone with her thoughts. Rakesh didn't recognize her, and he'd had the entire trip to stare at her face and the scar that distinguished her. Either he wasn't important enough to be told about Nicole, or maybe Shadowhill wasn't here at all. Maybe she'd just jumped to a conclusion. She'd spent the past two years wondering if someone might find her, tell her she'd been treacherous for leaving Shadowhill and take her back. Maybe she was just seeing things.

But Vargas had believed her. It had made sense to Delilah Vargas, and Nicole did not take that woman as one who made many mistakes. The thought was comforting, that someone else was acknowledging her reality as a valid one.

The vehicle slowed to a trundling crawl over the snow, then groaned as it heaved itself onto the steel platform of the New Dawn Pharmaceuticals garage. Nicole was relieved to escape from the cramped machine, but when she stepped out into the shocking cold, she found herself missing the jeep.

"Shut the damn door!" Rakesh yelled. An operator nearby hit a button and the garage's door descended, slowly cutting off the biting wind from the frozen world outside. Nicole looked around. The dull steel and curved rectangles of prefab construction. She wasn't sure she felt more comfortable now that they were trapped inside.

Rakesh led them deeper into the facility, past a security checkpoint manned by three very serious looking guards, each armed with assault rifles and covered in armour. They weren't wearing helmets, though; a mistake. The cool steel of the knife in her pocket was reassuring, like a comforting touch from an old friend. She realized with startling surprise that she actually knew what such a hug felt like, from Chakwas or Anderson. She wished she could consult either of them now.

The inside of the building was remarkably similar to Shadowhill, though there were more open spaces. Rakesh was guiding them to a lab where apparently they were running physical evaluations on twins—one with their gene therapy, one without. Nicole watched the other scientists—all busy people moving from one lab to the next, consulting this doctor or that. But that wasn't out of the ordinary for a place like this. On the way to another lab, she saw a scientist leave a datapad on a packing crate, with the haphazard air of someone meaning to return to a task they were likely to forget. Nicole clicked a button on the side of her omnitool and discreetly downloaded the information from the pad, as Rakesh gestured to a viewscreen. Two men were running on treadmills, one clearly outperforming the other.

"As you can see, the enhanced subject displays noticeable improvements to stamina and speed." One of the men was sweating profusely and gasping for breath as he ran on a treadmill, while his twin barely seemed tired at all. It might have been a trick of the light, but Nicole could've sworn the tired twin had thinner hair.

"How do we know the other one isn't just shit out of shape?" Vargas asked. Rakesh smiled smoothly.

"You will have access to the full document notes on the Cortez twins, I assure yo—"

The lights flickered, and then a thunderous roar reverberated through the floor as they shut off altogether. Some shockwave knocked Nicole to her feet, though by the time she'd slipped her hand into her pocket, the lights were back.

"Oh, dear," Rakesh muttered. "Snowstorm."

"I thought there already _was_ a snowstorm," Vargas muttered.

"What you saw on the way here was a quaint collection of flurries. A real snowstorm can cut off transport for days; I don't know why we didn't predict this."

"Well, mother nature's a real son of a bitch." Vargas helped Malick to his feet and shot a withering look at Rakesh. "So we're stuck here, is what you're saying."

"For a couple of days, at least. We will arrange some accommodation, I'm sure; we have no visitor's wing but a couple of living units are still free from our last round of layoffs."

As he spoke, a pair of armed guards ran up to them. Though one was male and the other female, both had black hair, brown eyes, and were of average height. They could have been printed from a mould.

"Situation normal, soldiers. Just a snowstorm."

The moulded soldiers gave a perfect, synchronous salute, then turned to go. As she did, the woman gave Nicole a look that lingered just a second too long.

"Nice scar." Nicole didn't respond, and the soldiers left.

XXX

True to Rakesh's word, they were given a large, old room that had once belonged to scientists—now fired, apparently. When they were finally on their own, Vargas brought Nicole and Malick into the sleeping quarters and gestured to the ceiling.

"Nicole—cameras. Go ahead and disable them. I don't mind New Dawn knowing that Alliance marines don't like being spied on." As she said this, she was glaring into a spot in the ceiling which, sure enough, had a microcamera embedded in it. In a moment Nicole had shorted out all the listening devices in the room. "Is that all of them?"

"Unless they have developed technology that would make a quarian shit themselves with envy, yes it is." Malick snickered, and Vargas grinned in that maddeningly sly way of hers.

"All right. Thoughts?"

"One of those twins," Malick started, his eyes dark, "The tired one. He was a clone."

"Shit. You're sure?"

"Yeah. An _imperfect_ clone, like the kind they'd make back in 2050 or something." Malick seemed deeply troubled—Nicole knew that sapient cloning was strictly taboo, but even she could tell something about the thought was eating Malick's insides. "Maybe they even drummed that guy up just for our demonstration."

"Jesus," Vargas muttered. "You going to be okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine."

Nicole realized, in that moment, that she was not the only member of Vargas' unit who had something in their past—some horrible secret that would not end its burning. Malick's face, normally animated and cheerful, was dark and downturned.

"Shit. Even if we could prove it, outside of Council space there's nothing we can do, not unless we can prove they've endangered Council citizens."

"I may have something," Nicole started. She scanned the file on her omnitool, bringing up the messages she'd downloaded from the datapad on a holographic display. She read the files in the blink of an eye, scanning them for useful information the way she'd been taught back at Shadowhill. "Look at this." She projected one image to the wall.

_XGS-072 has terminated. Recommend EXTREME CAUTION during asari trials—these subjects are valuable and difficult to obtain. Begin testing human biotics to determine cross-species effects of the inhibitor line._

"Well, they're about as sick as I expected," Vargas muttered. "A text file hardly amounts to concrete proof, but at least we know there's _something_ going on here. Now we just need to figure out how to get around the guards."

"They can't expect us to just stay in this room," Malick argued. "One or two of us might be able to slip away from Rakesh and do some digging."

"We should also sleep in shifts," Nicole said. "One of the guards … she looked at me. I don't trust them. This storm is a little too convenient."

"Agreed. I'll take first watch."

Nicole didn't argue, and found herself being woken for the third watch, dead in the night. Perhaps she was being paranoid, but there was something she couldn't shake about the look that guard had given her. She sat atop her bed, knife in hand, listening to the gentle sound of Malick's breathing, which was a hard task given the volume of Vargas' snores.

She wondered what was in Malick's past that made him so sensitive about cloning, and she wondered if she'd ever find out. She knew that if she could choose, no one would ever find out about Shadowhill. Malick's secrets were his own.

Their sleeping quarters were spacious, four beds with matching endtables and overhead lamps, now turned off. Nicole kept her eyes to the doorway, glancing periodically at Vargas and Malick to make sure no one had somehow infiltrated the room without her noticing. No one did. In the silent dark her thoughts gave way to her past, unwelcome souvenirs of old wounds like the scars on her skin. Her brother had studied genetic engineering, but he'd always been sad about it. He'd become a doctor to get away from it, he'd said. Nicole had been too young to ask why.

She wished she'd known him. Memories of her parents were scant and passing; her father had died young, and her mother hadn't recovered from her loss. Her brother had been father and mother to her. He had comforted her when she'd cried. What she'd been crying about she had no idea, but surely she must have cried.


	6. Chapter 6

Morning on Noveria was a simulated event half of the time, as its day cycle was more than double Earth's. The planet outside was still swathed in darkness while artificial lights brightened the corridors in New Dawn Pharmaceutical's lab. Vargas woke first, followed shortly by Malick. Military style they all filed into the showers and emerged perfectly presentable, despite wearing yesterday's clothes.

"Shepard, while we're being walked through the pony show, I want you to find a way to break away from the group and learn what you can, okay?"

"Aye aye, sir," Nicole responded automatically, though she couldn't help but think that such a thing would prove difficult. She couldn't exactly quietly slip away to go find the bathroom.

Rakesh emerged, wearing a fresh suit and tired smile, to take them on another "improvised tour of the facilities." No matter how many times he stared right at her, Nicole couldn't help but feel a shiver of trepidation. Did he truly not recognize her? Even if he didn't see a ten year old girl in the hardened soldier in front of him, he had to know about her scar.

The thought crept like a dark suspicion along her spine: maybe no one at Shadowhill cared about her. Maybe she was just irrelevant testing data, a throwaway variable discarded to the endless blanket of stars. Her escape from Shadowhill loomed like a mountain in her mind, a turian's smiling death, the selfless courage of a man named Anderson: were those moments special only for her? Had the machinery maintained its onward march without her there to see it?

She barely listened as Rakesh guided them through the halls, boring Vargas senseless with an endless stream of minutiae; Nicole realized, however, that Vargas was actually quite knowledgeable about the finer details of gene therapy. While she was keeping Rakesh distracted with a series of useless questions about "application timelines," Nicole noticed another scientist walking down the corridors, heading to another lab. Rakesh wasn't looking at her; quietly, Nicole fell behind the group, and slipped through the closing steel door behind the scientist.

The woman turned and gasped. She was plain-faced, had bags under her eyes, and had no idea how to respond.

"Um, excuse me, but—"

"Please," Nicole asked her, "I'm going to need you to be quiet for just a moment."

"What?" The woman sounded confused, like she wanted to be angry but knew better. Nicole raised an eyebrow. The woman blinked at her, bug-eyed and compliant. Sweat formed a glistening sheen on her wrinkled, white forehead.

Nicole jabbed her in the throat, kicked out her knee, then turned her around and wrapped her arms around the woman's neck, cutting off her air supply and the flow of blood to the brain. The woman kicked helplessly as she faded from consciousness. In a moment, it was done, and she slumped to the floor. Nicole had no idea how long she'd be out.

She checked the woman's pulse, then looked around her: she was in a lab, a series of desks and computers, with a few tables laden with chemistry apparatuses. In the back of the room there were a few storage lockers. She stomped over towards them and opened them up, finding a variety of useless paraphernalia inside—office notes, personal items—and then, in the very last locker, nothing but a single, opaque flask marked "AS-INHB-91." She wanted to take it with her, but for all she knew it was an explosive.

A holographic display was stuttering in a monitor off to her left. She went over to it and broke the system's security protocols as a matter of habit. This was apparently part of the public network of computers in the lab. A maze of irrelevant data detailing the private lives of scientists served as the only block between her and what she was looking for—but they were extraneous data. Like a search engine, she disregarded the extraneous data.

She found recording files. Mostly just boring testing data—but she found one still-frame preview. An asari, naked, bound in chains. Her blue skin was plastered with the dark purple of her own blood, scabbed and dried over deep cuts. Transfixed she turned on the full video.

The asari was immobile, lying prone in the disconsolate stillness of a torture victim. Blood dripped down her leg and pooled around her knees, dripping through the metal mesh of the cage to a dark floor. Overhead, a metal prod descended and injected something into her arm. She didn't react. When an electrical charge shot from the prod, she convulsed reflexively. Biotics flared among her skin, but the pattern was weak.

A voice broke over the video:

_"Subject displays markedly reduced biotic reactions to stimuli. Testing confirms primary cause is INHB-91; physical distress accounts for only 28% of the remarked decrease in biotic ability."_

The video ended. Nicole stared in silent, mounting horror.

The voice had been Gabreau's. Her senses dulled by sock, she only barely registered the dim hissing of the door—a fraction of a second later, she spun around to see an armored man enter. He held an assault rifle loosely in his hands, his complexion was grey, his eyes were a faded brown, and he was completely bald. The bags under his eyes gave him the look of an addict.

"That scar—sinister," the man commented. His voice was a wheezing gasp, as though he were unused to using it. The way he held the assault rifle communicated much greater familiarity. "It's distinct. You're very distinct."

Nicole backed towards the lockers and slipped the flask into her lefthand pocket.

"You're quiet, oh-twelve. Not pleased to see me? You wouldn't remember me, though. I came after you. XGS-zero-one-three. We never saw each other, remember? Not until you escaped. We all memorized your face. Thank you." He smiled faintly. "For coming to me."

He raised the assault rifle.

"Does Rakesh know?" Nicole was just buying herself time. Her brain was scrambling—there was a circular stool in front of her, with hard metal legs. A series of glass instruments on a table nearby. A pair of heavy workboots laying in one of the lockers behind her.

"He's no one," the man said contemptuously. "You'd know that if you'd stayed."

"Would I still have my hair?" Nicole asked dryly.

"Side-effect." The man grinned, revealing a row of yellow teeth. "After you left they decided you got away too easy. You wouldn't believe the kind of performance enhancers you can synthesize when you're not worried about addiction rates." Nicole positioned the chemistry table between them. "There's no getting out anymore. You're the last loose end." He raised his rifle one last time.

Nicole ducked beneath the table and grabbed the stool by one of the legs, rolling beneath a hail of gunfire. She leapt from behind the cover and threw the stool with the motion, the ungainly seat traveling in a clumsy arc towards the addict. He threw up his hands to block the crude weapon, giving Nicole the precious few seconds to dash towards him, leaping up to kick the assault rifle out of his hands. He reeled backwards in surprise and tried to aim a punch at Nicole's kidney. Nicole caught his arm, brought it down over her shoulder, and threw him over her. When he was on the ground she pulled the knife out of her pocket, drove one knee into the back of his neck, and calmly slit his jugular vein.

He died quickly, which was the only mercy Nicole knew how to give. She grabbed his rifle and the cold steel was a comfort in her hands. The targeting computer was configured not to fire for anyone but the man she'd just killed—her omnitool answered that problem easily enough. A slow, steadying breath filled her lungs. She turned on communications with Vargas.

"Commander Vargas, please do not respond. Act as though I am not speaking." Nicole had rigged her comms to directly communicate to Vargas' earpiece. "I've just discovered evidence of torture and forced pharmacology. An assassin from Shadowhill tried to kill me. He's dead. I'm going to meet back up with you, but the situation may worsen."

Vargas couldn't respond to her; it wasn't safe.

Nicole went back to the console and scanned the data once again. The video had been recorded in some place called Sublab C—a subterranean construct accessible by tramway. Nicole downloaded all the data and stored it in her omnitool's virtual lockbox. It sickened her that the video was mingled with the letters from Chakwas and Anderson, but there was nowhere more secure than that solemn space close to her heart.

She left the room, the comforting weight of the assault rifle in hand. Her steps were carefully measured and her squared shoulders communicated effortless authority. When one scientist passed her in the hall, the woman didn't so much as speak, though she did stare like a plucked hen. Nicole passed by the woman and found her way to the lab where Vargas and Malick were listening to another of Rakesh's sermons; it was the same one that they'd seen the twins exercising in. The door slid open and she walked through with cool, measured calm. Her face was unreadable, but hers was the only one: Vargas looked exasperated, Malick was disturbed, and Rakesh was a loud noise short of a heart attack.

"What are you _doing_?" He hissed. His eyes were trained on the assault rifle in her hands, with obvious fear and confusion; he had no idea what was going on.

"Shut up," Nicole advised him. She looked past Rakesh, to Vargas. "I don't know if there'll be any more, but the last went down easily enough. We need to get to Sublab C, by the tramway."

"Sublab?" Malick asked faintly. It occurred to Nicole that he hadn't received her comm message explaining what had happened.

"Subterranean."

"Underground," Malick repeated, without enthusiasm.

"Underground," Nicole agreed.

"All right." Vargas stepped between them and looked into Nicole's eyes. Nicole suddenly felt under very close scrutiny. "What are we looking for?"

"An asari, hopefully still alive, severely tortured. It's all being done to test a drug inhibiting asari biotics. I don't know about any humans."

"What are you _talking _about?" Rakesh blurted. He looked scandalized. Nicole was trying not to grind her teeth to a powder. Instead she asked him,

"Rakesh, is there a bald man working in your security detail? Bags under his eyes, yellowed teeth, greyish skin."

"No, no one like that, our staff are all healthy—"

"Shut up before I lose my patience," Vargas muttered. "All right. So the guy shooting at you at least wasn't known to common staff. That might mean—"

"Shadowhill." Nicole uttered the name like a curse. Rakesh wasn't bothering to interrupt anymore; Malick looked absolutely baffled, but at least had the sense to not slow things down.

"The security staff are likely as informed as Rakesh," Vargas muttered. "Damn. That'll complicate things. Nevermind the fact that only one of us is armed, we can't exactly treat innocent people like soldiers."

"Could someone _please_ explain what is going on?" Rakesh demanded. Nicole looked at him and grinned, a menacing half smile that twisted her scar.

"Give me your omnitool or I'm going to knock you out." He stared. So did Malick. "That's what's going on," Nicole clarified.

Rakesh gave her the omnitool. She fiddled with it for a moment.

"There. This has access to the station's security system. Give me a moment…." She dumped the data onto a partitioned section of her own—heavily modified—omnitool's storage. She turned to Vargas. "I can make the computer think there's a fatal gas leak and start the alarms while leaving the tramway open, sir."

"Do it," Vargas ordered.

"Aye aye, sir." Nicole entered a few commands into the device and was answered by the blaring of sirens. The cool overhead lighting went red and started flashing, while an urgent mechanical voice intoned:

_"EMERGENCY. CHEMICAL LEAK. ALL PERSONNEL IMMEDIATELY EVACUATE TO PORT HANSHAN. EMERGENCY. CHEMICAL LEAK. ALL PERSONNEL IMMEDIATELY EVACUATE TO PORT HANSHAN."_

"I suggest you evacuate," Vargas advised Rakesh. He looked outraged, but obviously powerless. He left. "All right, Shepard. You know how to get to the tramway?"

"Yes, sir."

"Take us there, then."

While they walked—with absurd calm—through the crimson-lit halls of New Dawn Pharmaceuticals, Vargas did an admirable job of bringing Malick up to speed, though she had to yell to be heard over the loudspeaker. She mercifully left out who or what Shadowhill was other than an Alliance black ops program gone bad.

"So they sent an _assassin _after you?" Malick asked Nicole, yelling over the mechanical warning.

_"EMERGENCY. CHEMICAL LEAK. ALL PERSONNEL IMMEDIATELY EVACUATE TO PORT HANSHAN."_

"Yes." Nicole didn't elaborate.

By the time they made it to the tramway, New Dawn was deserted. Nicole offered the assault rifle to Vargas, who was the rifle expert. She grinned like she was being given a toy.

"You shouldn't have," Vargas teased. Despite herself, Nicole had to fight a blush. But Vargas knew as well as Nicole did that the assault rifle would be best served in her hands. She was the Commander. If anyone was going to have a weapon, it felt right that she should.

Besides, Nicole had her knife.

As the tramway whirred beneath them, the walls changed from smooth steel to a layer of solid, rough-hewn rock. They were travelling downwards, beneath the surface of Noveria. It made sense. If you wanted to conduct safe testing of live subjects away from Noveria's turbulent storms, an underground facility was ideal.

Still, Nicole didn't like moving deeper into rock faces.

The tramway ground to a slow stop at a docking platform. It was devoid of life and dimly lit, with only a few guidelights on the floor leading to the interior labs. Vargas dropped into a combat position, steadied her rifle against her shoulder, and signalled Nicole and Malick to follow her.

"I feel naked without a gun," Malick whispered. "Well, not _actually _naked. That would be embarrassing."

Nicole smiled, but Vargas shot Malick a look that would have sent a lesser man screaming for his mother.

"Sorry, ma'am." Malick's voice was barely audible.

They crept into the corridors, which were like an eerily dark replica of the labs aboveground. A long hallway led to a public area, deserted and clearly never used. If there had been any spiders, there would be cobwebs. Instead there was only a quiet, sterile stillness that amplified the echo of their steps.

"Either you were very wrong," Vargas whispered to Nicole, "Or frighteningly right. This place seems to be modelled on the slightly-less-creepy-as-fuck version upstairs. Hopefully the labs are in the same place."

Vargas led them down a corridor identical to the one where Rakesh had been demonstrating the "safely, ethically tested" gene therapy programs New Dawn claimed to specialize in. They looked into the labs, but most of them were empty. The first break in the pattern of steel walls and steel floors and steel doors was a stain of blood in the middle of the floor in front of them. It was the dark purple of the asari. Vargas crouched down and scanned it with her omnitool.

"This is a couple of days old," Vargas whispered, as though unwilling to break the silence in the dark. "Someone has been through here recently, at least. Come on."

Nicole couldn't help but think of Shadowhill, at night. She'd spent six years there, sometimes sneaking around while all the guards were sleeping, but the fear she'd felt then was nothing to the quickening in her heart now. The thought that she might have to go back. That she might be willingly marching back, a fly inching along a spider's web. They passed through more labs and found them all empty. At the end of the hall, there was a door where there had been none above ground. It was barely perceptible in the dark, back wall, but they were all special forces. Malick and Vargas had been trained to notice such things: Nicole had needed to, or she would have died in a dozen Shadowhill training simulations.

"Shepard, can you unlock this door?"

"Yes, sir." Shepard brought up her omnitool and tried to access the door's security feed. It was hard to find, but it was using an old, familiar encryption mechanism: the same one that Gabreau had used at Shadowhill. It made sense to use it again. As far as Nicole knew, it was unique, and she was the only person alive who'd figured out how to hack it.

In a moment the door hissed open and a blinding light seared Nicole's vision. She shielded her eyes, heard the rolling of a canister, and just barely realized that it was a flashbang grenade. On pure instinct, she rolled past it, and through the door. The steel door slammed shut behind her as her vision cleared; she turned around and tried to open it, but failed. She couldn't hear Vargas and Malick on the other side, though they were surely fine—a flashbang would only disorient them. The door was soundproofed. She turned around to see a long, narrow hallway leading to a large, circular floor surrounded by tall walls lit with brilliant light. In the middle of the floor there was a cage, made of a thin metal wiring.

In the cage, she could just see the prone, naked figure of a woman. An asari, actually. Nicole sprinted down the corridor and to the cage, grabbing at the metal bars.

"Hey! Are you okay?" The woman barely stirred, but didn't respond. Nicole ran her omnitool to scan for life signs—she was hurt, and severely medicated with a dozen compounds that her omnitool didn't recognize. Nicole looked at the cage for some sort of security panel but all she found was a simple padlock.

"I have never, in all my years, seen someone hack a padlock," a kindly voice explained. It came from speakers surrounding her in the circular arena, bouncing off the walls and redoubling as though in assault. Gabreau's voice was as calm, fatherly, and fake as Nicole remembered. One section of the wall fell away and there he was, wearing a white lab coat, slightly aged but still wearing that salt and pepper beard. His glasses, though clear, obscured his eyes with reflected light.

Nicole pulled the knife out of her pocket.

"No need for that, Nicole," Gabreau said. He smiled. "I think it's obvious you're in control here. From this range I daresay you know a dozen ways to kill me."

"What did you do to this asari?" Nicole demanded. A burning rage coiled in her stomach, surprising her, even as an ancient part of her mind wanted to _trust _Gabreau. She _knew _what he was.

And yet he seemed so kind, now.

"What, this thing?" Gabreau spoke dismissively, as he might of a plant. "We've been testing a drug to cancel asari biotics. I'm pleased to say it's been a success. You'd never guess, but in its heyday our subject here was quite the Commando. Capturing it was a trial, but worth it. We have definitive proof that the inhibitor line works." He smiled again, like a grandfather. "Just as we have proof that Shadowhill worked, in you. Oh, we've made errors—the steroids and addictive drugs, that was a mistake. I learned that when I sent oh-thirteen after you. No matter how good the performance enhancer, an addict is an addict. They're psychologically weak. Not like you." He stepped towards her.

"Get away from me!"

"Or what? You'll kill me? You could have done that when you escaped from Shadowhill. You had me right there, with a pistol in your hand." Gabreau's words rang against the inside of her skull.

"I'm not the kid you tortured anymore," Nicole spat at him. She found the rage, used it, let it twist and burn inside her and give her the strength to face this man. He just stood there, calmly, unthreatening, unassuming, as though he were discussing the weather.

"No, and I'd be a fool to count on it. Which is why I'm telling you that if you kill me, systems in this facility will expel a poison gas that will kill you, this asari, and your friends who are so diligently trying to gain access to this Sublab." His voice changed, now, to strict business. But then it was gone, and he smiled. "I regret having to resort to such measures, but I've learned better than to underestimate you. You are either my greatest failure or my greatest success. It tantalizes me to wonder which you will prove to be."

He kneeled down and pulled out a metal key. Inserted it into the padlock and opened the door.

"There you go. You can have your asari slut, if you like." Nicole jumped a little, absurdly surprised at the profanity. "Our work here is done."

He turned to go.

"What about the other missing colonists? The humans?"

Gabreau looked at her over his shoulder and shrugged.

"We needed to test the inhibitor line to ensure it would not prove lethal to humans. We perfected it, eventually, but not before several trials had ended. Progress is marked by cost and result. Some death is an acceptable, even inevitable cost, to produce anything of value."

He walked back to the slit in the wall, which slid shut behind him. Nicole stared for a long time, listening to the asari stirring in the cage. She didn't know what she wanted, but she knew that hadn't been it. She was still clutching the steak knife in her hand, the weapon she'd cleaned of the other man's blood. Gabreau had called him oh-thirteen. XGS-013. She beat the number into her own head. 013. Oh-thirteen. Oh-one-three.

The asari was nearly awake, now. Nicole pocketed the knife and sat in front of the cage, waiting for her to revive.

"Are you all right, ma'am?"

The asari looked up at her and babbled something in rapid Vilos, an asari dialect Nicole only had rudimentary knowledge of.

"Do you speak Siin?" Nicole asked, in the Siin language. It was Vilos' closest cousin.

"Yes," the asari replied. "They took my translator. Did they take yours, too?"

"I have it disabled," Nicole said, in her curt, clipped Siin. Siin was typically a more romantic language, but Nicole had learned it from a computer. It gave her a unique accent. "I prefer to talk like this."

The asari managed a half smile.

"Me too. Are you my saviour?"

"I'm Nicole Shepard. I'm an Alliance marine, and I'm here to get you to safety, ma'am. Do you know of any others?"

"No … no, I've been here for weeks." She cradled her head. Perhaps the pain still lingered. "In this room … I've never seen it so bright."

"Do you think you can walk?" Nicole asked, as kindly as she could.

"My biotics are gone. They took them away." Nicole got the feeling the asari was only half-talking to her. "I can't … I can't."

"Would it be okay if I carried you?"

"That looks like our only option," The asari replied simply. She was in shock, plain as day; Nicole could tell from experience. She only hoped it would hold out long enough for them to escape. Nicole pulled off her own shirt and gave it to the asari; wearing only her bra, the lattice of scars on her arms was revealed, as well as a few on her chest and stomach. The asari pulled the shirt on and stared at her. "Alliance marines get it rough, do they?"

"I did." Nicole picked the woman up and brought her back to the door in the corridor. When she approached it, it opened without a fuss. She almost wanted to laugh, if she didn't have a torture victim in her arms. The door opened to reveal Malick and Vargas framed on the other side. Vargas had her gun raised, but dropped it when she saw Nicole.

"You all right Shepard?"

"Yes, ma'am."

Vargas looked at her for a long moment, and glanced at the asari, who had faded out of consciousness.

"All right."

They made their way back to the tramway in silence, and rode it in silence. When they returned to New Dawn Pharmaceuticals, the lab was empty. They made their way to the exit and found Satrapi and Barrows waiting for them, Satrapi's dark face concerned, Barrows looking impatient. When they saw the asari—now dressed in a labcoat taken from the upper lab—they didn't say anything, only followed orders with Nicole and Malick as Vargas commanded them all to return to Port Hangshan.

At the port, Nicole let Vargas do the talking. The asari was taken into the care of a group of asari commandos working as security for one of the other companies renting labs. When he found out what had happened, the administrator of Port Hangshan was furious. The exclusive rights of Noveria, it appeared, did not extend to the capture of Citadel Space citizens. A simple examination of the "Sublabs" beneath New Dawn Pharmaceuticals' rented lab showed that numerous subjects—human, asari, and one turian—had been tortured and eventually killed. The administrator offered to pay off Vargas for their silence, which, to Nicole's surprise, Vargas accepted without another word. Later Vargas told her that the money would go to the Alliance and the crew would get a small bonus—no sense in not cheating a scumbag out of money when you could, she said.

Before she left, the asari told Nicole her name—she was Thaetya Iln. She was still in shock, so she didn't say much other than her name, but Nicole appreciated it anyway. She boarded the _Baghdad_ with Vargas and the others, who kindly gave Nicole the space she clearly needed. Thoughts played and replayed in her head, remembering Gabreau's words. He'd been right. She could have killed him—could have killed him _easily_—when she'd escaped Shadowhill. Why hadn't she?

If she had, none of this would have happened. If she had, thirteen humans, five asari, and one turian would still be alive, and Thaetya Iln would have no memories of injections and electric shocks.

Nicole found a sleeping pod and sealed herself away. Tried to still the reels of old memories spooling in her head.

Failed.

XXX

Gabreau watched security footage of Hangshan from the comfort of his office in an orbiting, lightweight cruiser. It was a salarian design whose interior had been retrofitted for human comfort—a necessary deception, in Gabreau's opinion. Things unfolded at the port more or less how he expected. The data he'd left at the labs would satisfy Alliance officials and keep them from pursuing him with proper diligence.

"You should have killed her," A man growled, walking out of the shadows. Gabreau was facing a computer screen, leaning back in his chair; his company stopped just behind him. The man's voice sounded like gravel chewed over sandpaper.

"Curiosity snares the best of us, I fear," Gabreau muttered. No façade now. "She is the only other product of Shadowhill worth preserving, aside from yourself. Speaking of which, the other addict—XGS-010—make sure she's disposed of."

"I'll get it done. Quietly." Despite the harsh treble of the man's voice, he sounded amused. "You're sure INHB can't work on humans?"

"I'm sure, Tobias. For the last time."

"You can't really blame me, can you?" Gabreau turned around to look at his last real trainee from Shadowhill. He was tall, pale, had messy black hair halfway down his back, and beneath a long jacket was wearing a black exoskeleton tight to his skin. It mostly traced an outline of his bones, but over his heart there was a solid black plate, hiding a chamber. He was almost always shirtless, unless he was on a mission; he seemed to enjoy the irony.

"Your exosuit would prevent you from losing your biotics anyway, Tobias. At least the critical functions," Gabreau said dismissively.

"Critical functions," Tobias repeated, without enthusiasm. Hollow tubes lit with the dull blue of biotic activity were wired from his neck to the plate above his heart. Or, rather, the space where a heart should be.

Instead, he had a synthetic motor, powered by his own considerable biotics, pumping blood and a number of other things through veins. Gabreau's crude work on 013 and 010 had been for the benefit of this, his ultimate project. An assassin without a heart. The metaphor was appealing.

"Keep an eye on Vargas' squad. They may become a problem," Gabreau muttered. He got to his feet and went to a storage locker in the far side of the room. He extracted a small package from it and brought it to his assassin.

"What's this?" Tobias raised an eyebrow. He opened the package anyway and found a small handle with a switch. He flicked it and a monomolecular katana flipped out from the hilt. He smirked. "Dead men bring swords to gun fights, Doctor."

"But Tobias," Gabreau protested, "You are a dead man."

Tobias laughed, a harsh, ugly sound, a trait he owed to the surgery that had removed his heart. He grinned like ice, pale blue eyes glinting like merciless diamonds.

"I suppose you're right, Doctor. I suppose you're right."


	7. Chapter 7

Space was quiet, though the ships never were. The low humming of the ship's engines became a constant, thrumming background noise, grating at first but soothing once she was used to it. When her sleep pod cracked open, Nicole stretched her arms out in front of her, locking her fingers together. She could see her forearms, covered in small, clean scars from careful incisions. She could see the one crude, jagged scar that ran along her left bicep, last souvenir of a dead kid from Shadowhill. Her arms fell to her side.

When she left the sleeping pod it closed automatically, hissing shut on hydraulic power. Nicole remembered Chakwas once joking that she'd hid a hydraulic pump in her arms, and she smiled. She wondered where Dr. Chakwas was now.

She left the sleeping quarters and found a quiet place in the mess to go back into her omnitool and find all the data she'd taken from New Dawn Pharmaceuticals in her lockbox. She moved it to another storage unit, separate from all her letters from Anderson and Chakwas. That made her feel a little better. Footsteps broke the quiet hum of the ship's engines and Nicole turned to see Barrows walking towards her. The woman's face was almost childlike, but she looked deadly serious.

"Wanted to apologize to you, Shepard."

"No need, Staff Lieutenant," Nicole replied formally. Barrows rolled her eyes.

"I mean it. According to Vargas you're the one who figured the place out and got that asari to safety, so … I'm sorry for doubting you. You're a fine soldier."

"Thank you, sir."

"Barrows is fine."

Shepard nodded mechanically.

"Okay."

"Look, Vargas was thinking about grabbing the away team up for a game of poker—kind of a post-mission ritual. Why don't you come along? Since you did save the day and everything." Eve grinned, but Nicole felt sick to her stomach. The only reason Gabreau had been able to _do _all that was because of her.

"All right."

"Do you know how to play poker?"

"I'm a fast study," Nicole assured her.

XXX

Vargas had gathered with Satrapi and Malick in the engineering deck, at a large, circular table that had the worn look of repeated use. Vargas grinned and waved Barrows and Shepard over. She was wearing an Alliance hoodie, a big pair of sunglasses, and a toothy grin.

"You made it! You explained everything to Shepard, right Barrows? No going easy on the newbie."

"Sure did."

Satrapi looked deeply mistrustful.

"If you think I'm going to fall for the 'helpless newbie' card, you've another thing coming," he muttered.

"You're just sore 'cause you've got no game," Malick joked.

"Gambling was never my strongsuit."

"That and you keep a straight face about as well as the good Commander here," Malick rebutted.

"Yeah, we'll see who's laughin' this time," Vargas muttered. She pulled the hoodie over her head and settled back into her seat. Nicole took the only remaining chair, between Barrows and Vargas.

"If you think that hoodie's going to save you, you are sorely mistaken," Barrows teased. Vargas flipped her the bird and started dealing cards. The game, apparently, was taken with deadly seriousness, and the joking stopped quickly enough. After a couple rounds, she had identified more or less reliable tells—not individual behavioural tics, but rather patterns. It was actually kind of fun, figuring it out, and once she did, she struck. She was helped by the fact that she had to remember to project a facial expression in the first place. Over the course of the game, Satrapi, then Barrows, and finally Vargas—who swore so impressively that Nicole committed her diatribe to memory—were knocked out until it was just her and Malick.

Nicole had called—to match the bet, Malick had to go all in. He obviously had a good hand, and was trying to figure out if Nicole was bluffing. Nicole knew to a mathematical certainty that he had only a 10.4% chance of beating her.

He went in, revealed his cards, and his three aces lost to Nicole's straight. It was the best hand she'd had all night. Only when Malick groaned in frustration did Nicole permit herself to smile, a slight thing that didn't twist her scar.

"How did you _do_ that?!" Malick demanded, throwing his cards up in frustration. "I swear, you don't _blink!_"

Vargas—who had discarded her glasses and taken down her hood—leaned onto the table and glared at her.

"That was the best fucking poker face I have ever seen, and don't think I'm ever going to forgive you for it." Then she grinned, clapped Nicole on the back, and said, "Congrats. Never again let any here doubt Nicole Shepard." She produced drinks from a cooler that she'd apparently hid beneath the table and tossed one to each of them. Nicole glanced dubiously at the beer and drank it with the others—she couldn't get drunk thanks to Gabreau's gene therapy, and the taste was foul, but drinking with the squad was oddly nice. Vargas was sitting right next to her, leaning onto the table.

They all talked for a while, sharing stories; Nicole was content to listen. Vargas described an escapade with her old combat instructor, who apparently got "abso-fucking-lutely shitfaced" and tried to challenge a krogan to a boxing match.

"Damn krogan was gonna do it too, so I had to haul Commander Anonymous' ass back to base kicking and screaming." Vargas took a drink from her fourth or fifth beer with the impressive skill of a borderline alcoholic.

"The moral of the story being … don't box with krogan?" Barrows asked dubiously. Vargas laughed.

"The moral of the story is that while under the influence of heavy inebriation your Commander's probably about as smart as a shovel, so don't let her start a fight. I consider this an investment on my future security." Malick laughed, Satrapi chuckled, and even Barrows grinned a little. Too late, Nicole remembered to smile.

The rest all shared some of their own stories, fond misadventures and favourite jokes. Nicole enjoyed listening, but she felt a slow growing fear that they would ask her to join in. She didn't have any stories to share. She couldn't.

"So, Shepard," Barrows started, "What about you?"

Nicole's heart sunk into her chest. She closed her eyes and took a breath, trying to think of something to say that would explain who she was, or hide what she'd done.

Instead her mouth moved without thinking.

"I don't really have any stories," she admitted. "When I was ten years old the colony I lived on, Mindoir, was attacked by batarian slavers. The man who tried to stall Vargas, Rakesh—he recruited me for an Alliance program called Shadowhill."

No one said a word, but four sets of eyes were glued to hers. She tried to look back at them.

"They trained me to be—well, an assassin, I guess. That's why I know tech, and sniper rifles, and … other things. It's where this comes from." She gestured to the scar on her face. "That's how I knew what to do on Noveria: New Dawn Pharmaceuticals was being run by the man who ran Shadowhill."

She waited for a moment. She felt her pulse rising, blood rapidly pumping through her veins, pounding behind her ears, threatening to silence her forever. She took a steadying breath and looked at each of them, really looked at them. No one was saying anything. She couldn't tell what Barrows or Malick were thinking; Satrapi looked like he wanted to hug her. Vargas's jaw was clenched shut.

"When I was sixteen years old an Alliance Captain came to investigate Shadowhill. He rescued me, took me to Earth. They put me in a training school for two years until they figured out what to do with me. When I graduated they stuck me in special ops, probably to keep me out of sight. That's how I wound up here. That's why I'm a Lieutenant." Nicole laughed, a low sound. "I don't even know what's expected of a Lieutenant. They trained me to kill, to infiltrate, to sabotage, but they didn't train me to be an Officer."

"So that's why you haven't been to n-school," Barrows uttered, as though in a trance. Nicole nodded.

"That's why I haven't been to n-school."

No one said anything. To Nicole's surprise, Vargas reached out and clapped Nicole on the shoulder, and left her hand there for a while. She didn't say as much, but Nicole felt a faint sense—somehow—that she was proud of her.

"I understand if you're not all comfortable—" Nicole started, before Vargas actually snorted.

"This is a special ops unit, not a goddamn pleasure cruise. Anyone feel so uncomfortable about Ms. Shepard here that they are overwhelmed by a sudden desire to vacate their position?"

"No, sir!" The response was unanimous.

"So cut that shit, Shepard. No one here has to apologize for their past." Vargas sounded rough, but there was a note of kindness in her voice, too. No one spoke for a while, and the silence pooled around them, at once comforting and choking. It seemed impenetrable, until Malick looked up, at Nicole.

"When I was fourteen I found out that my sister's a clone. Well, my first sister—she died as a baby. So my parents somehow managed to have her cloned. She grew up thinking she was born like anyone else. Little stronger, smarter than normal—they can do that, now. But when I found out, I knew that someone else could, and if they did, she'd be in danger 'cause of the Council laws. So I joined the military and got on the N7 track with the understanding that she'd be kept safe." He grimaced. "Then she went and joined up, too. How's that for a mindfuck, huh?"

"Sorry, man," Barrows muttered, "I didn't know."

"So is it just me and Eve without some haunted backstory, then?" Satrapi joked faintly. Nicole actually smiled, so much that her scar stretched a little. She realized that none of them cared.

"Makes the whole 'absentee dad' thing look like a load of shit, huh?" Barrows asked dryly.

"Everyone has a past," Nicole said. She hadn't really meant it for anyone, but Barrows was looking at her. Satrapi, too. They all were. "You don't get to change it, I guess."

"Well said, Aristotle," Vargas said, grinning devilishly. "All right, ladies, gents, we are going to get Lieutenant Shepard here so plastered she'll be smeared on drywall!"

She grabbed more alcohol—from an apparently endless supply in her cooler—and passed them around.

Nicole decided, in the spirit of fun, to not reveal her chemically engineered alcohol tolerance until later in the night.

XXX

The next day, four of the five combat-ready members of Commander Delilah Vargas' special forces unit were completely, really quite impressively, hung over. Vargas returned to her quarters and announced she was taking a rest day, and encouraged everyone except "Goddamn Shepper" to do the same. Nicole busied herself in the ship's office section with some minor paperwork that, it turned out, was her responsibility. She felt good. Not one of them had been suspicious of her, or judged her … though that probably had to do with the fact that they were fresh off a successful mission.

That, and there was Vargas, who had made her position on things perfectly clear. Nicole reclined in the office chair she was seated in.

_Commander Vargas…._

She blushed a deep scarlet when she realized where her thoughts were headed and went back to the paper work. Vargas was her _commanding officer_, and besides, Nicole knew on some level that she was as well equipped to handle such feelings as a flea was to stop a glacier.

The way Vargas smiled, though.

Nicole distracted herself with paperwork in the meantime, every now and again opening up her omnitool's lockbox to reread an old message from Anderson or Chakwas. Once, when Anderson had been busy doing some functionary duty—what he called "political crap"—he'd sent her a string of messages in faux-desperation. She read them and laughed quietly.

_Day one. Met a man named Burroughs. Claims to be an expert in stress management and troop morale. Nearly fell asleep twice during presentation._

_ Day two. Attended three seminars with salarian ambassadors. Can't pronounce their names. Thought one was a woman. Turns out salarian women don't leave homeworld._

_ Day three. Meals like ash in mouth. Light growing dim. Discreetly reading novels during seminars now._

_ Day four. Got caught reading novels. Have to sit through meetings now without anything to keep me awake._

_ Day five. Help me Shepard, you're my only hope. _

_ Day six. Shepard, watch Star Wars sometime, I'll attach the vid to this message. It's this old movie from the 20__th__ century, it's absolutely hilarious._

_ Day seven. Coming home. This experience has changed me. Now I know what suffering feels like._

_ Hey, kiddo, hope things are going well. I'll come visit you when I'm back home, should be soon. Keep in touch._

"You've got a nice smile, when you're not trying to hide it." Nicole jumped and turned to see Vargas, standing behind her and looking only marginally hung over. Her hair was a mess and her smile could've charmed a con man out of his house. "That scar of yours, kinda does something with the dimple. It's cute."

"Um, thanks, Commander Vargas."

"Don't sweat it. Not to break up such diligent work, but we've got new orders. Apparently there's a distress signal nearby that we've gotta check out before we head back to Arcturus. We'll be meeting up with another unit on the way now."

"Where's the signal coming from?" Nicole asked.

"A new colony," Vargas explained. "The survey team called it in … some planet called Akuze."


	8. Chapter 8

Akuze was green with life, like Mindoir before the fall. Fields of terraformed grass swept with the gentle wind native to the far-flung planet, and prefabricated dwellings dotted the landscape like steel bones resting on the earth. Nicole watched on a monitor as the _Baghdad_ descended towards the planet, entering into orbit.

"The distress signal came from the far side," Malick said. He was looking at the close-ups with her in the CIC, at a brightly flashing terminal. "In this big crater thing, where they couldn't get any good soil to stick. Survey team was trying to figure out what was causing it, then they just went quiet."

"Hopefully it's nothing major," Nicole whispered. "Colony worlds don't have much protection."

"If it is, we'll take care of it," Malick promised. Nicole looked at him and nodded. She hadn't quite expected that out of him, but then again he was proving to be full of surprises. "Or at least, you guys will while I run around panicking." He grinned and laughed, and Nicole obliged him by smiling a little.

"I somehow doubt that," Nicole said. Malick was still grinning.

"You're too kind. I know who I am, though. Barrows and Satrapi, they're both lifelong soldiers. You and Vargas, you're both—hell, I don't know how you do what you do. I barely made it through n-school. I'm really only here 'cause it was my only choice." His smile, Nicole realized, was a little sad; it didn't quite meet his eyes.

"It was mine, too," Nicole said softly.

"Yeah. Shit, I'm sorry."

"No! No—it's fine," Nicole said hastily. She hadn't meant to make him feel uncomfortable—she was still barely aware of the fact that she'd revealed who she was to four more people. She was so used to her past as a shadow that in the light she didn't recognize its shape. She keyed off the monitor and looked past Malick. "I guess I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't in the Alliance."

"Well, for what it's worth," Malick said, "I'm sure you'd figure something out. But speaking as someone whose ass is in the hands of his squadmates, I'm damn grateful you're one of us."

"Thanks, Malick." Nicole was smiling, without thinking, for the first time in years. She realized it soon enough, from the uncomfortable stretching of her scar, but she didn't mind. She hadn't known any of these people long but she felt like—was starting to feel—that they could be friends.

"Come on, we should get to the docking bay," Malick said. Nicole nodded and followed him; they were both already in their hardsuits, ready to land on Akuze. Nicole had a sniper rifle strapped to her back and a lightweight shotgun holstered at her side. Malick was carrying an assault rifle and pistol.

When they got to the docking bay, the rest of the team was similarly equipped—Barrows had heavy weapons and a pistol, Satrapi had a pair of pistols and an assault rifle, while Vargas herself had an assault rifle on her shoulder and two machine pistols strapped to her sides. Nicole couldn't help but think that each of their choice in weapons said a little bit about them.

"All right, we don't know what we're getting into, we just know that the pioneer team suddenly stopped sending updates back to the pre-colony settlements on the other side of the planet." She activated her omnitool and showed a projection of a map, a flat land space bordered by low mountains. "The distress signal is here, right about in the middle."

"I don't like this," Satrapi muttered.

"Yeah," Barrows agreed, "This is weird. They just vanished?"

"Apparently. Shepard, you see this elevated ridge here?" Vargas pointed to the only raised terrain within the boxed-in flatland. "I want you positioned up there with your Harpoon. If anything goes bad I'd feel a lot better knowing we had sniper support."

"Aye aye, sir," Nicole said. She didn't have any doubts about her abilities with her sniper, but she didn't feel so easy with letting all the others go on the front lines. There was nothing for it, really.

_"Landing in two minutes_," said the pilot, over the ship's communications system. The soldiers all pulled on their helmets, hissing shut as their faces were sealed inside. Nicole had modified her helmet to give her a special display that focused on the heads of potential targets; now it caused a slight zoom effect on Vargas' face. Beneath the safety of her helmet she smiled, watching Vargas in the last moment before she pulled on her helmet, too. Vargas smirked as she did.

Vargas said something to Barrows, then walked over to where Nicole was standing, slightly distanced from the other soldiers even in the cramped space of the docking bay.

"How you holding up, Shepard?"

"Just fine, sir."

"That was brave of you," Vargas said, communicating only over a direct link in their headsets, so that the others couldn't hear. "Last night. Anderson never told me the whole story. You should be proud."

"Proud?" Nicole didn't understand.

"To come through all that, and still be decent, still be human … that's a hell of a thing, Shepard."

"Thank you, sir."

"When you saved that asari girl, just came walking out of there in her arms, I remember thinking—that's what an Alliance marine should look like. Not to mention, in case you hadn't noticed, our little brigade is a little heavy on the frontline stuff." Nicole could almost _hear _Vargas' lopsided grin. "So it won't be half bad to have someone with some sense of discretion. You should see Barrows when she gets going with that missile launcher of hers—like a kid on Christmas."

Nicole had no idea what Christmas was, but she gathered the meaning. She felt the ship slowly drifting to the ground, and the slight touch of gravity that exceeded the ship's dampening systems as it touched ground. The loading hatch opened to reveal a sand-blasted landscape, devoid of life and utterly unlike the half of the planet she and Malick had watched from orbit.

"Let's move it, marines," Vargas ordered. They saw another ship landing, with several more ground troops walking out. They weren't special forces—none of them had Vargas' N7 stripe—but they were there in numbers if nothing else. Vargas brought them over to the other unit's commander and explained their troop positioning. Nicole felt slightly melancholy as the entire squad set off, in uniform, for the pioneer site, while Nicole turned and made her way to the raised hill that Vargas had identified for her. On an impulse, she uttered into their squad's chatline:

"Good luck, guys."

"Appreciate it, Shepard," said Barrows.

"Let's not need it," Satrapi said dryly. Nicole grinned as she climbed to the top of the ridge. It had one sloped side, which she'd walked up, while the other end had a sheer drop about fifteen feet down. She set up her rifle with more than usual fondness; she'd modified it personally, adjusting the barrel for distance and velocity, modifying the scope to work with her helmet's unique targeting system. A few of her more clever modifications shaved its overheat risk without impacting the muzzle velocity. She'd also disabled some of the gun's safety features, let it fire a little harder—her shoulder, genetically engineered, could take much greater impact than an average soldier's. She looked through her scope at the pioneer site, but she saw only what orbital cameras saw: a small, slightly wrecked camp completely devoid of life. She glanced back to Vargas' squad: even hidden in sleek armour and a helmet, Vargas had a distinctive swagger. Barrows already had her missile launcher out and ready.

"Someone's eager," Satrapi muttered.

"Prepared," Barrows corrected. "Hey, Shepard, how good a shot are you with that thing anyhow? 'Cause their squad leader's a real dick."

"Very funny, Staff Lieutenant," Vargas said. From her tone she was clearly amused and trying not to be.

"I can shoot his real dick if you like, sir," Nicole said. Vargas actually snorted, and Satrapi doubled over laughing. He waved at the other squad when they looked concerned.

"That won't be necessary," Vargas said, her voice clipped from trying not to laugh. "Not ten minutes in and we've already descended to dick jokes."

"That's a new record," Malick commented cheerfully.

"All right," Vargas said, this time to both squads, "We're coming up on the site. Weapons ready; for all we know a dozen krogan could be hiding under the toilet."

Nicole heard the clicking and hissing of collapsible weapons being withdrawn and deployed. Vargas' assault rifle, Nicole realized, had a skull and crossbones imprinted on the side in red. So did all of their primary weapons—it must have been a group insignia, hidden when their weapons were collapsed. Nicole wondered if she might do the same to her Harpoon—then flinched inwardly, thinking such a thing might be unwelcome. She was still new to their unit, an outsider.

Maybe one day. There was time.

"We'll go ahead," Vargas ordered. She, Satrapi, and Malick all entered into the small complex with bustling efficiency. In a few moments, they were out again. "Fuckin' empty. Looks like this might have been a waste of all our time."

Nicole breathed easy, and only realized how tight her grip on her rifle had been now that she relaxed it. The soldiers started to disperse, and Nicole started to pack up her sniper rifle.

The earth shook without warning, sending a wave beneath stones and dirt that knocked the soldiers off their feet; Nicole was grateful she was already prone.

"Are you all right?" Nicole demanded.

"Yeah, just a tremor—shit, I didn't know Akuze was so damn touchy," Vargas responded. Malick gave a shaky laugh over the intercom that turned to a panicked yelp as _another _shockwave rumbled in the earth. Nicole hugged herself to the earth. "What the shit—shouldn't we have been told the goddamn planet's shakin' like a nervous virgin?"

Nicole grabbed her sniper rifle and looked down the scope, at Vargas. She was alert, on her knees, waiting for the next shake. Nicole took a breath.

The next tremor came almost as expected. Some of the regular soldiers swore over the chat, but now Vargas' squad was dead silent, ready to solve this problem. Nicole looked out of her scope while the ground shook, which was just as well, because then she saw it.

Fifty feet from the pioneer station the earth exploded, erupted upward like a tree of dirt spontaneously growing and collapsing as a giant pillar of flesh and armored hide vaulted up from hidden depths. Screams erupted over Nicole's headset but the sound went dead and time went still as she stared at a thresher maw, fifty feet of murder ending in a giant mouth lined with teeth. Her horror froze the maw in place, imprinting its image on the canvas of her mind. She watched as a volley of rockets fired from multiple heavy weapons collided with the monster, ripping off pieces of its flesh. Coming back to her senses she seized her rifle and pumped rounds into the weak spots between joints or where the missiles had damaged its carapace.

"Run! Get the fuck out!" Vargas screamed, physically grabbing Barrows and dragging her away. Another soldier didn't listen and charged forward with his missile launcher—the worm fell effortlessly to the ground and collapsed on the man, crushing him in a splatter of blood. Nicole didn't flinch, shooting into the beast despite the futility of it. Vargas turned around and started firing with her assault rifle once her squad was running away. Nicole screamed into the headset,

"Run!"

"Shut the fuck up Shepard and keep shooting!" Vargas wasn't giving up, dodging behind the pioneer camp as the maw fired some sort of caustic acid from its mouth. Nicole fired into the beast again, focusing on the joint behind its neck, praying that she could find an artery. Something that big would need a huge network of hearts to pump whatever it called blood through its veins, and a rupture would at least slow it down. She fired. Again. Again. She inhaled what oxygen she could, ripped off her helmet, and jammed the scope in her eye, staring into the heaving, armored hide of the beast. Found the chink in the armor, accounted for gravity, coriolosis, Mindoir's wind, and fired.

Green blood exploded from the maw's neck and it collapsed, falling to the ground. The earth shook when it fell and its roars echoed for miles, but all Nicole heard was Vargas letting out a relieved breath over the comm.

"Jesus Christ Shepard, I thought I was dead."

Nicole pulled her helmet back on and took a breath; Akuze wasn't toxic, but it wasn't shirt-sleeves safe, either.

"Glad that's not the case, sir," Nicole said curtly, breathing heavily not out of exhaustion, but of sheer blind panic. Vargas laughed.

"Yeah, me too." She waved to the other members of the squad and ran towards them.

"Ladies and gentlemen," Barrows said, "That's what an N7 looks like." Vargas audibly snorted.

"An N7 with a goddamn Jesus sniper saving her ass, more like it."

Nicole smiled and started to climb down from her perch. Just as she had thrown her rifle over her back, the earth shook and knocked her down, over the flat side of the short cliff. In a panic she grabbed at the surface and pulled herself back up. She looked around for her sniper and then cursed—it had fallen off the cliff, clattering to the ground below.

Without her sniper's scope she watched as the ground erupted again, and again, and again. Around the soldiers three thresher maws burst from the earth with a sound like an atom bomb. The sound of a world dying.

Nicole leapt the full fifteen feet on the sheer side of the cliff and landed, her modified bones and Alliance-issue hardsuit absorbing the fall. She grabbed her sniper rifle and fired it off uselessly at the three monsters. Thrashing tails and spitting acid buried the soldiers near the outskirts, the ones from the other squad. Nicole ran forward, shooting her sniper, trying to find the same artery she'd shot before. Vargas' squad had started running between the two furthest thresher maws, desperately making a break for it with what was left of the other squad. Nicole tried to draw the attention of the threshers, even screaming at them through her helmet, but they ignored her in pursuit of their prey. Barrows fell behind the rest and laid down the rest of her missiles, trying to buy time. Then she threw her weapon at them and started cursing over the radio, before—

A thresher charged down and grabbed her in its mouth, cutting her in half. Nicole dropped her sniper rifle and stared, open-mouthed. Her breath fogged her helmet and clung to her skin as a mist. Satrapi and Malick turned around to chase after Barrows, after the ruined corpse with her name. Vargas grabbed them and tried to pull them back, before a spray of acid buried Satrapi in his armor, his screams strangled in Nicole's headset. She fell to her knees and watched, her helmet's targeting zooming in on his melting face. She turned away, forced her helmet to unfocus.

"Shepard, look the fuck away!" Vargas screamed at her. Nicole was crying silently as she watched. "Look away!"

Malick broke away from Vargas, tried to divide the threshers. In a whirl of teeth and death two coiled around his body until it wasn't him anymore, just flesh and guts and torn strewn armor flying between teeth.

Vargas was sprinting away, moving faster and running harder than Nicole had ever seen.

A spray of acid flew through the sky and arced towards her, almost in slow motion. Nicole screamed into her headset.

"VARGAS, ROLL LEFT!"

Vargas rolled left and the acid barely grazed her right shoulder. She rebounded and ran further, trying to tear away.

Before her a fourth set of teeth erupted from the earth and rose up as mercilessly as the dawn.

Nicole's targeting system adjusted itself and just managed to focus on Vargas' helmet before she disappeared down the monster's throat, forever.

XXX

The thresher maws had left after Vargas had died. Alone, Nicole wasn't a tempting enough target for them. The _Baghdad _came and picked her up, the crew staring in silent horror. It took her a while to realize that with the rest of the squad dead, she was the highest-ranking officer on board. No one made her take responsibility, though—they went back to Arcturus station without a word from her. Nicole stripped out of her armor, dressed in Alliance sweats, and sealed herself in one of the sleeping pods. She came out twenty hours later and had to answer a message from Alliance High Command, in Vargas' quarters. The thought sickened her.

Vargas' quarters had few personal effects, but she saw in one corner of the room a violin case. Shepard walked over to it and opened it, slowly, reverently. The violin was beautiful, wood curved and waxed and slightly worn by years of long play. She closed the case again and turned to Vargas' console, where a message was waiting. She answered it. An Alliance Admiral—some woman Nicole didn't recognize—appeared in hologram and asked her what had happened. Nicole gave as direct an explanation as she could, and confirmed that yes, really, she was the only marine still alive. The Admiral said something that was supposed to sound sympathetic.

She was told the ship would return to Arcturus Station. She asked where David Anderson was.

"To my knowledge, he's on Earth."

Nicole was informed she'd be given leave time, more than enough to visit him there. She thanked the Admiral and closed the connection. As debriefings went, it had been remarkably informal—but so far as Nicole knew, it was an unprecedented disaster. Sixteen Alliance marines had died on what was supposed to be the military equivalent of a check-up. She couldn't bear to think about it. She couldn't bear to stand in Vargas' room anymore. Leaving, she passed by the anonymous crew in silence. None of them would look at her, the stranger who had come along and somehow lived.

She went back to the sleeping pods and stayed there until she could not.

XXX

Between Akuze and Earth Nicole paid no attention to the worlds she saw. People in uniforms apologized to her, commended her, thanked her. She passed through them in a haze, the same dreamlike reality that had surrounded her like a fog when she'd first broken from Shadowhill.

On Earth they sent her to a psychologist, who tried to determine if she was still fit for duty. Of course Nicole responded to her questions with unflinchingly honestly, with cold facts, without the slightest hesitation or emotional outlash. The psychologist said that her "lack of emotional response might indicate shock—but Lieutenant Shepard's previous profile indicates that such a response is typical."

It was.

Nicole spent some time at Anderson's apartment on Earth, which was strange for her because she had only lived in military quarters for years. Anderson took the couch, and tried his best to get through to her, to break through the fog again. He even ordered out pizza and they watched all the _Star Wars _movies—the original nine, Anderson claimed, the _good ones_. Nicole actually laughed at all the strange aliens—somehow more otherworldly because everyone knew what aliens _actually _looked like-and smiled when Han Solo came back to help his friends in Episode IV. The sixth one was her favourite, though.

"Why?" Anderson asked.

"It's hopeful."

Anderson hugged her, then, and she hugged him pretending, for a moment, that he was like her father. In those precious few days between lives Anderson kept her afloat, helped her stay sane. Days later while Anderson was away, an Alliance officer came to the door and gave Nicole something—Vargas' violin. Nicole stared at the case and found it in her to ask,

"Doesn't she have family?"

"Yes, but this was supposed to go to one of her squadmates … and as they all passed …."

"They didn't pass," Nicole said simply. "They were killed. Thank you."

She took the violin, walked back to Anderson's couch, and wept. For hours, she cried into a beautiful leather case, until Anderson came back home. He was clearly startled, but just sat down beside her. She had curled herself into a ball, the violin case on the floor. He laid a hand on her knee. He didn't say anything. There was nothing to say.

But he was still there, and that was enough.

XXX

When Nicole was invited to n-school, she accepted without comment. She excelled without comment, and she was promoted without comment. By now people knew what she was, the contagion she carried. They avoided her, remarked at her progress, and were silently grateful, in their homes at night, that they were not her. No one wanted to know who she was, and she didn't want them to know.

When they promoted her to N7, when they finally gave her a red stripe, she did not reveal the slightest ounce of herself. At that ceremony where the straight-backed marines allowed themselves a smile, Nicole Shepard's face displayed only scars. Anderson and Chakwas looked on, proud of her, so Nicole tried to smile, for them.

She remembered blue turian eyes, dying in a cold room with a child's shirt around his throat. She remembered Talon smiling as he died, grateful for the arm she'd severed and the bullet she'd shot. She remembered Gabreau's smile, remembered a shivering, naked asari tortured and deprived. She remembered Vargas, smiling, Vargas dying, vanishing into the mouth of a thresher maw.

She remembered.

_What is born of Fire rises_

_ What fades is not destroyed_

_ What glimmers hope despises_

_ What shudders faith restores_

_ What death begets becomes_

_ The last of us are still._


	9. Chapter 9

Eden Prime hung in the sky like an apple without a tree. Nicole watched through the port window in her quarters, the planet slowly looming larger as the SSV Normandy approached. A stealth ship named for a battle between humans, built by humans and turians, sponsored by the Citadel and watched quietly by a turian Spectre, a grim man named Nihlus. Eden Prime continued to grow larger in her window, in spite of all that. Even now, years later, colony worlds gave her pause, brought back the raw, fleshless memories of a life she'd barely known.

She wondered if there were any young girls down there with a doctor for a brother, a silent and determinedly alcoholic mother. Probably. There were 3.7 million people living on Eden Prime. One or two of them had to be as fucked up as she had been. Her omnitool, a thin metal band around her wrist, blinked an orange light. She'd disabled most of the holographic interface, instead programmed it to project invisible keys—she had them memorized. The contours of that device were as imprinted on her brain as the hull of this ship was on its engineer's.

"Commander Shepard, report to the Comm Room," Anderson's voice ordered, stern and formal. He was with someone—the Spectre. He wouldn't speak like that otherwise. Anderson's presence was a comfort on this strange ship, where she knew no one; the Spectre's was another matter entirely. Dark, tall, and surprisingly gentle, the red-faced turian Spectre filled Nicole with doubt. Spectres never went where violence wasn't expected.

"Aye aye, sir," Shepard responded. She got up from her desk and walked through the ship, up the ramp from the civilian quarters and onto the CIC, the section where the pilot's seat and command center were located. A dozen Alliance soldiers were sitting at their stations, managing the hundred tiny tasks it took to fly a starship. Nicole's footfalls, quiet and catlike, never made the slightest penetration through the rigid military clamor. She passed by the other officers and soldiers, into the Comm Room behind the CIC. It was a large, steel room shaped like an oval. Anderson and Nihlus were waiting there for her, Anderson slightly faded with age, stocky, dependable; Nihlus tall, lean, wearing black armor that gave shocking contrast to his red skin and white facial tattoos. Even among turians, he was intimidating. Behind them, an image of Eden Prime was projected on the viewscreen.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Nihlus asked her. Nicole nodded, and he grinned, his mandibles twitching in amusement. "I see you're as talkative as I've been told."

"Be rude not to live up to my reputation," Nicole said dryly.

"Let's get to it, then," Anderson said. He flipped a switch and the image on the screen changed, to an image of a pillar being excavated out of the earth. It looked like it was made of some sort of greenish metal, like nothing she'd ever seen. "That's a Prothean beacon, dug up here on Eden Prime. It's been excavated by the colonists but the Council wants us to take it in, since the _Normandy's _such a shining example of interspecies co-operation and all."

"I'm here as their representative," Nihlus explained cordially. Nicole glanced at him and raised an eyebrow.

"No you're not."

"Pardon?"

"Spectres don't tag along to archeological digs and shakedown runs. I may not be required to know what you're really here for, Spectre, but I'm not an idiot." Nihlus actually chuckled.

"Fair enough. Guess I'll skip to the interesting part, then. I'm really here for you. To observe you." Nicole glanced to Anderson, who nodded. "The Citadel's taken an interest in you, Commander Shepard—your service record is impeccable, and what you've done and seen … it's beyond the ordinary."

Nicole felt her stomach twist.

"This is a huge honour, Nicole," Anderson said, forgetting to use her title. "They want to see if you're Spectre material."

"If you're successful, you'll be the first human Spectre. Your military command, as I understand it, hopes it will be another step in humanity's integration with the galactic community," Nihlus said. Nicole didn't ask how he knew that. "I hope it'll help heal the rift between our people."

"What do you think, Shepard?" Anderson asked her. It actually sounded like a question, though she knew it wasn't. It was shock, sure, and a part of Shepard, an old part from Shadowhill, bucked at the thought of serving the Citadel Council rather than the Alliance. But when she recognized the source of that impulse she burned with silent anger and bit it down.

"I'll just have to make sure I'm up to it."

Joker's voice broke onto the comm, distressed and urgent.

"_Captain Anderson, we've got a distress signal coming from Eden Prime. Patching it through."_

The three soldiers turned to the viewscreen and watched a shaky camera display of a hail of gunfire blasting verdant fields. Whoever bore the camera was running, glancing back in time to see Alliance soldiers shooting at an unseen enemy, fleeing and screaming as dirt exploded from the ground. The cameraman stumbled and fell and the image turned skyward.

"Well," Anderson said softly, "You two should get down there."

XXX

Eden Prime smelled like Mindoir did. That stunned her at first and rendered her silent in her hardsuit, staring at the pristine planet with the _Normandy's _roaring engines behind. Kaidan and a young soldier named Jenkins were with her, and probably assumed Nicole Shepard was just being the silent hardass they'd heard about.

_Of course it smells like Mindoir. It's been terraformed. The earth is the same balance of chemicals. The plants have been introduced in the same way_.

"Commander," Kaidan muttered, his voice struck dumb with awe. "Look." He was pointing at up, beyond the hills around them.

A great hand reached down through the sky, huge and impossibly large, the fingers—or were they fingers?—wafting gently in the sky as they loomed above. It was—could it be a _ship? _It was the size of a mountain, floating among the clouds. Nicole stared in silence with Alenko and Jenkins before she came to her senses. The ship started to pull away, and Nicole swore she felt hostility coming from it, like a grinding in her skull. From the looks on their faces, the other soldiers felt it, too. Alenko and Jenkins looked like they didn't believe what they were seeing. Nicole Shepard did not share their reservations.

"Come on," she said brusquely, leading the men down a grassy path warded on either side by rocky hills. Large animals, gas-bags with dangling legs, floated harmlessly nearby. It was quiet, pristine, almost dreamlike. Nicole didn't like it. "Weapons ready."

The sharp hissing and clicking of collapsible weapons deploying made her feel more comfortable. The scope unfolding out of her sniper's exoskeleton was like an old friend greeting her. She glanced downrange. Nothing. Too much nothing—only gasbags drifting idly as though there was nothing in the world but them.

"Careful," Nicole cautioned them.

"You see something?" Kaidan asked.

"No. That's the problem."

"I'll check ahead!" Jenkins blurted, hoisting his assault rifle before he charged off down a narrow path between a series of rocks.

"Corporal get your ass back here!" Nicole yelled, sprinting after him with Kaidan in her wake. She turned the corner and ducked behind a boulder just as she saw the curved flash of chromed steel, three buzzing attack drones in the sky. Jenkins was completely exposed. In slow motion Nicole saw the scene, Jenkins with nothing between him and three killers but open air. They'd shoot him, rip through his shields and armor and leave him dead inside.

She threw aside her sniper and leapt out of the cover to dive for Jenkins' knees, knocking them out from beneath him. He fell and twisted as gunfire ripped into his back, but Nicole grabbed him and pulled him back to cover. Her kinetic barriers hummed angrily as gunfire ricocheted away. She made it back behind the boulder just as her ears rang with the sound of breaking glass; her shields had broken.

Jenkins was trying not to scream, and failing badly. Kaidan took him and dragged him away while Shepard pulled out her sniper and poked out behind the rock. Her shields were down, and the drones twitched in the air like insects, but she only had to fire her rifle three times to kill the three machines. She turned back to see Kaidan tending to Jenkins with medigel.

"You're going to be okay, kid," Kaidan was assuring him.

"My back! Augh, it burns!"

"Better your back than your head," Nicole said, kneeling down beside him. "It looks severe, but you'll live. I'm sorry. The medigel should help with the pain. Alenko, stay with him and make sure he gets evac." Nicole got up and turned to go.

"Commander, surely you don't mean to go alone?"

"Not unless you're about to disobey a direct order, Lieutenant," Shepard said idly. She meant it as a joke, but Kaidan couldn't tell.

"Yes, sir—sorry sir."

"Don't sweat it, Alenko. I'll be fine. Infiltration's kind of my thing."

She radioed the _Normandy _with instructions to pick up Jenkins, and pressed on. Chakwas would make sure the kid made it. She had to.

She moved over the grassy terrain, down hills and over smoother clearing. She saw a couple more of the drones and dispatched them with calm effectiveness from behind cover. She wanted to scan them, but she couldn't risk it, not after they'd torn through Jenkin's shields so quickly.

As she came onto another clearing, she heard the sound of long, sustained gunfire beyond the crest of the hill ahead. She sprinted up the incline, and when she looked down she saw a mess of a battlefield, bodies strewn among overturned crates blasted by gunfire. One soldier in white armor was diving for cover as laser fire came downrange, from another hill beyond her. Nicole looked through her sniper rifle and recoiled at what she saw: a metallic, sleek body, with a telescoping flashlight for a head and a wicked, oval weapon in its hands.

_Geth?_ Nicole thought, incredulously, before she shot one in the face. Its head exploded in a shower of sparks, and it fell. She pegged the other one in the chest, its body ripping apart from the impact, unfurling like a metal flower in violent bloom. Just as Nicole brought her scope to the last visible enemy, the soldier in white opened fire, pumping the machine full of rounds from her assault rifle, shooting with furious abandon. The woman swore and recoiled as her gun vented in her face.

When Nicole came down to check on her, the soldier was already performing a perfect salute. Nicole returned it and said,

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, ma'am, thanks to you. Gunnery Chief Williams, with the two-twelve."

"Commander Shepard," Nicole replied, nodding curtly. "What the hell happened here?"

"I have no idea. One minute, we were just on patrol, and then—there was that ship in the sky, and these _things_. Are they geth? _Could _they be geth? I'm half-afraid I'm going crazy, ma'am."

"Either we're sharing a remarkably grim delusion, or you're perfectly sane," Nicole replied dryly. Williams grinned; Nicole did the other soldier the courtesy of pulling off her own helmet, so they could see eye to eye. "How many?"

"At least a dozen," Williams replied; the exhaustion in her voice gave away the truth of it. "And too many drones to count. And—something else."

Nicole felt her stomach sink.

"Something else?"

"Like I said, I almost think I'm crazy—come on, I'll show you. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it."

Williams led her to a clearing beyond, filled with the rubble of destroyed prefab houses, and dotted by metallic spires taller than trees. At the base of each spire, there was a human body, impaled through the stomach. Vomit stung the back of her throat when she realized they were colonists; one was a young boy no older than fourteen.

"_Geth _have been doing this? Why would machines do this?" Nicole asked. The spikes retracted into their bases as though in reaction, and the bodies slid off the spires and slapped to the ground. Nicole pulled out her shotgun out of reflex and levelled it at the corpse; its body was rapidly turning a faint, greyish blue, and she could make out wires embedded in its flesh. It jerked to its feet, as though it were hanging on a wire, its arms flopping uselessly at its sides. It stared back at them for a moment before it opened its mouth, lined with fiber-optic cables, and shrieked like a vulture.

Nicole shot it in the head. Instead of blood, a shower of electric sparks burst out of its neck, like a geyser. Her shotgun was even in her hand, but her breath was unsteady. The two remaining bodies on the other spires started to twitch, and this time Nicole opened fire on them before they woke. Williams joined her; both woman fired a little more recklessly than was necessary, but the thought of those things _moving _again filled Nicole with dread. They shared a glance and a moment of silence between them.

"Did you see the ship?" Nicole asked. Changing the topic seemed wise.

"Yeah. I couldn't _believe_ the size of it," Ashley muttered, looking pointedly away from the spires. "And I could almost _feel _it. I know that sounds crazy—God, I must sound like a lunatic—but I knew it was the _ship_. Not the geth or these … husk things."

"That's troublesome," Nicole commented. "Do you know where the beacon is?"

"Yeah, just a little farther ahead, at the spaceport." Nicole tapped her comm to signal Nihlus, who'd gone on separately; in the face of all that had happened, she'd almost forgotten about him.

"Did you hear that, Nihlus?"

_Yes, I'm nearly there. See you at the site, Shepard._

The Gunnery Chief led Nicole to the beacon site in a nervous silence. First the geth, then those … _things_, those mockeries of human beings screeching like banshees. Nicole kept glancing skyward, wondering if that ship would show itself again. It had to be in low orbit if it had been visible from the surface, but she couldn't spot it. She could almost feel it, though she was half-convinced that was just a leftover from Shadowhill. Nicole had a unique paranoia about becoming too paranoid—so she had a habit of dismissing vague sensations. But this felt real.

As they ascended another of Eden Prime's countless slopes, a gunshot, almost absurdly commonplace, rang through the air. Nicole ran the rest of the distance with Williams following behind her, to find a vast, empty spaceport that was a mess of old storage crates. Lying on the ground was Nihlus, with a hole in his head. Blue blood flowed down his skull and pooled beside him. Nicole crossed his arms on his chest and turned his face to his right shoulder. Lastly she closed his eyes and whispered something in the Common turian tongue used by colonists.

"Uh, Commander?"

"Tradition for turian soldiers," Nicole explained. As she was getting to her feet she heard a rustling behind one of the creates; she drew her shotgun on reflex and spun around. Williams already had her gun out. "We are Alliance marines! Identify yourself!" Nicole barked, prompting a very terrified man in a ratty sweater and ball cap to all but leap from out behind a crate, hands raised.

"Jesus, don't shoot, don't shoot!"

"I'm not going to shoot," Nicole said calmly. She let her shotgun down, slowly, choreographing her movements. Williams followed suit, Nicole noted with approval. The man was visibly shaking, breathing rapidly, and he stank of his own piss. "Are you okay?" He nodded.

"Mmhmm. Yeah, I—I think I'm okay. _Christ_, it was these turians—"

"Turians, as in plural?" Nicole asked carefully. The man nodded again, a sudden jerk of his head.

"Yeah, they—fuck, at first I thought they were friends! That—" The man looked like he wanted to puke, but he managed to point a shaky finger at Nihlus's corpse. "That one was just looking around when this other came up—he called him Saren. They knew each other, they looked like they were part of the same _squad_ or something!"

"And then?" Nicole asked.

"And then Saren shot him," the man said simply. "Just shot him in the back of the head. I just stayed back here and hid. I don't know the other turian's name," he finished breathlessly.

"I do," Nicole said quietly. "Nihlus Kyrik. He was a Spectre." Nicole looked at his corpse. He shouldn't have died this way. "Thank you. Just one more thing: did you see the beacon around here, anywhere? Did Saren have it with him?"

"That thing? No—they took it to the cargo train earlier, before all this," the man muttered. He retreated into his own thoughts, and Nicole wasn't going to stop him.

"Stay here, all right? An evacuation team should be through soon, but for now we need to move. We have to get that beacon." Shepard nodded at Williams. The man reclined against the crates and stared at Nihlus's body with hollow eyes.

XXX

As they approached the cargo train, Nicole's omnitool let out three rapid beeps, signalling a quiet alert that froze Nicole's heart with fear.

"What was that?" Ashley asked.

"That," Nicole said blankly, "Is literally only one of five audible signals my omnitool is programmed to emit. It's for an atom bomb."

"So first they kill people, then they bring them back to life, then they _blow them to smithereens?_ I thought A.I. were supposed to be efficient, not sadistic tin cans with flashbulbs for heads!"

"They may not be acting alone," Nicole said, almost as an afterthought. The tramway they were riding slowed to a stop near the cargo train's loading port and Nicole brought up her omnitool again. "I've got the location of the bomb. Williams, I'm going to—ah, shit."

Four geth sprang out of the building to their left, guns blazing. Williams was quicker to her rifle and laid down covering fire while Nicole scrambled behind a large industrial crate. She unfolded her sniper rifle and leaned out to peg two geth in their bizarre heads; Williams had already finished the other ones. Nicole ran to the bomb, guided by her omnitool, and kneeled by it to try and figure out how to diffuse the thing. A few scans gave her enough information to start with….

"More of them, Commander!"

"Keep them off of me!" Shepard ordered, ripping off a panel on the bomb to find a mesh of wires. Nicole swore beneath her breath: it was remarkably low-tech and her omni-tool might as well have been useless. Instead her mind ran back over all the simulations she'd had to do at Shadowhill, where she'd trained with live bombs that wouldn't kill but would certainly wound. Here the consequences would be more severe. The timer marked three minutes. She fabricated a small carbon blade with her omnitool and started working at the wires, trying to isolate the fuse. Sweat trickled down her brow as she found what she _thought_ was the right collection of wires. It was a small comfort that if the geth had a remote detonator, she'd be dead before she could feel it.

She isolated the fuse, cut its wires, and held her breath. Nothing. It had worked. With her freakish, augmented strength, she dug into the panel and cut away the detonator charge with her manufactured blade, then tossed it to one side.

When she looked back up, Williams was waiting for her with a smug grin on her face. Behind her there were five dead geth.

"Impressive work, Gunnery Chief," Nicole said as she pushed herself to her feet. Williams gave her a hand and shrugged.

"Doing what had to be done, ma'am. I scouted ahead—you're not going to believe this, but the Beacon is still there! Just sitting on the platform."

"You're shitting me," Nicole blurted. Williams actually chuckled and said,

"No, ma'am."

"Now this makes _absolutely _no sense," Nicole muttered. Williams took her to the platform up the loading ramp, where the beacon stood. It was as tall as a tree, a thin straight piece of utterly alien metal that was pulsing a faint green glow, generating an almost soothing aura that felt the opposite of the sensation the ship had left her with. It somehow—_somehow_—struck Nicole as the difference between an opened palm and a closed fist. Williams wandered closer to it.

"What in the hell is this thing doing?" She wondered.

"Glowing," Shepard opined wryly. She turned on her comm and said, "_Normandy_, the Beacon is secure. We've got at least one civilian behind us, a disarmed nuke, and a dead Spectre. Nihlus is gone, shot by someone named Saren."

_"Saren. You're sure?"_ Anderson demanded, almost sounding angry.

"Yes, sir. That's what the civilian said, and he didn't seem to be lying."

_"Shit."_

"_I'm assuming it's Saren Arterius_." Nicole said. Anderson had a history with Saren, Nicole knew; she was probably one of the few who did. Williams was wandering closer to the Beacon, though Nicole could hardly blame her: they were staring at real Prothean technology, the same stuff that had made their place in the stars possible. If it wasn't for the people who had built that spire, they'd still be sitting back on Earth.

_"We'll be down in five, Commander. Well done._"

"Aye, aye, sir. Thank you, sir." Nicole closed the comm and ripped off her helmet. Williams did the same and leaned against the railing near the Beacon.

"Hope this was worth it," the soldier muttered. "I mean, I get it. Prothean technology gave us the universe. This is like one of the bones of galactic civilization, right here. But all those people…."

Nicole was distracted, watching the Beacon. Its throbbing glow had started to accelerate, beating once per second, then twice, then three times….

"Williams, get back!" Just as Nicole cried out, she saw green light snare the Gunnery-Chief, lifting her from the ground. In a horrible moment she remembered Mindoir, she remembered Akuze, she remembered each pitiless death she had been unable to prevent. She saw Vargas vanishing down the throat of a thresher maw. Her legs had started moving without her thinking. She leapt into the air, grabbed Williams by the arm, and wrenched her back, pulling her free from the field and sending her sprawling to the ground.

And then Shepard was snared, wreathed in gently glowing green and rising into the air by a force like a great hand wrapped around her waist. Williams got to her feet and Nicole yelled,

"Get back, soldier! That's an order!"

Then the darkness came for her, wrapping around her and penetrating the deep parts of her mind, lifting out her memories and laying them bare like organs up for donation. Memories burned and mixed and melted together, searing into place. She ran from a batarian on Mindoir, child's legs failing to push her ahead, and the batarian's face shifted into something monstrous and horrible, insect-like. The sky was a dark skein of purple blood, screams of agony drilling through her skull. Twitching wings battered the air and she ran, ran, from Gabreau.

Blue turian eyes died for the hundredth time before her.

A billion lives, a billion deaths in utter agony, burning through her.

Talon smiled as she shot him and thanked her as she tore off his arm.

A giant ship like a hand hovered in the sky above Eden Prime, above Mindoir, above a thousand worlds she didn't know. It reached down from the sky and wrapped around her, grabbing her waist, her child's waist, she was only eleven, how could she fight fingers so strong?

It pulled her into the darkness, down the throat of a thresher maw towards Talon and Gabreau and Vargas, and it whispered a name, _Reaper, Reaper, Reaper_, until there was nothing left but Nicole Shepard, a child alone in the cosmic dark.

XXX

Lying on a cot in the medical bay of the _Normandy_, Nicole slept as still as death. Anderson asked Chakwas, and she was apparently fine, by every measure they had. Though Chakwas said that she had serious doubts if they could accurately measure the full effects of Prothean technology.

"Nicole's going to be fine, Anderson. As far as I can tell, she's just sleeping off whatever happened. When she wakes you'll be the first to know," Chakwas promised him. Anderson nodded and saw to Corporal Jenkins, lying very much awake in a cot of his own.

"How you holding up, kid?"

"Chakwas never mentioned what happened to me, did she?" Jenkins muttered bitterly. Anderson took a breath and started to speak, but Jenkins cut him off. "I'm never going to walk again." Chakwas looked over from where Nicole was and frowned.

"Like I said, Corporal, it may require surgery, but you should be able to regain some use of your legs."

"Yeah? How many active soldiers in the Alliance have 'some use' of their legs? Aside from our pilot," Jenkins spat, jerking his head in the direction of the cockpit.

"Son, you've got your life," Anderson said, not unkindly. "That's a blessing, with what happened down there."

The boy looked away, towards Shepard. He didn't say anything, but he didn't have to. Anderson didn't know what to say for the boy; he'd clearly decided to deal with what had happened with hate. There was nothing to be done about that. When he left the medical bay, he found Ashley Williams standing outside, in Alliance fatigues and a perfect salute.

"Captain Anderson, sir. You wanted to see me?"

"That I did Gunnery Chief. I've talked to your superiors and they agree it'd be best if you joined the _Normandy, _if that's what you want."

"It is, sir."

"Good. Now, I'd like you to tell me what you saw down there—off the record. I know all the details from your report, but reports don't include gut feelings and instincts. I want to know what you saw and what you felt down there. Whatever caused all this, whatever did this—it wasn't the usual kind of hatred."

"No arguments there, sir," Williams muttered, shaking her head. She sounded shaken herself, like she was trying not to fall apart. "Just … when I saw that ship, reaching through the clouds, I thought—just for a moment—that the world was about to end. I guess, in a way, it was, for some of them."

"What about the Beacon?" Anderson pressed, a little too urgently. Williams just shrugged.

"No idea. It was glowing when we got there. I guess you could say it almost felt welcoming. But when it picked me up, I'll admit I was terrified, sir. Until Commander Shepard saved me. Just knocked me clear out of the thing. She didn't even hesitate."

Anderson couldn't help but smile.

"That sounds like her."

XXX

While Shepard slept she did not dream, but as reality slowly ebbed into her consciousness, she remembered the nightmare, the unspeakable fear she'd felt as visions forced their way into her heart and settled there. The name _Reaper _burned into her skull in a dozen different languages. Vision came back slowly, but when it did she saw Dr. Chakwas looking down at her.

"I see you're back among the living," Chakwas said. "How do you feel?"

"Like I was dumped out of an airlock," Nicole muttered, rubbing the side of her head. She was just awake enough to be aware of the monstrous headache pounding a drum behind her eyes. "But I'm in one piece. What about Jenkins? And the civilians?"

"All fine," Chakwas said quietly. She spoke carefully, like she was walking on broken glass. "Jenkins won't get any use out of his legs, but with time and enough surgery, there's a chance…."

"He'll never be a soldier again, will he?" Nicole asked. Jenkins was sleeping in his cot, not ten feet away from her. It was remarkable how unchanged he looked, with his legs hidden by a hospital sheet. Chakwas shook her head. "At least he's alive."

"He was always such an eager soldier," Chakwas mused. Nicole pulled herself up to a sitting position, slowly, finding that nothing was wrong except for the persistent ringing of her headache.

"I didn't take the time to get to know him," Nicole said. "Maybe if I had…."

"Nicole, stop that," Chakwas said sharply. "You did the best you could. The boy owes you his life."

"I doubt he feels that way," Nicole said. "What about Gunnery Chief Williams?"

"As far as I'm aware, Anderson asked her to join the _Normandy_ crew, and she accepted. I think she's down in the Armory. How are _you_?"

"I'm fine. Got a headache that could kick out a mule, but other than that I'm fine."

"Do you remember anything? About the Beacon, about what happened?"

"I'm not entirely sure I remember everything clearly, but there were … images. Blending with my memories."

"Anderson needs to hear this," Chakwas said quickly. Nicole nodded in agreement and Chakwas opened up a comm. "Captain Anderson? Commander Shepard is awake. She's fine and ready to see you." Nicole cracked a smile.

"'Commander Shepard?' I can't remember either of you ever taking my rank so seriously." Chakwas smiled, too.

"Sorry, Nicole. Have to be official on official comms. Besides, it's always 'Dr. Chakwas' with you. About time I had some revenge." Nicole smiled again, but saluted as Anderson entered the medbay. He responded in kind.

"Nicole, thank God." In quick strides he came over to her bedside and pulled her into a rough hug, releasing her just as quickly. "For a while there I was worried—guess that was foolish of me."

"Hardly professional conduct," Nicole said, with military calm. Anderson actually snorted.

"Good to see you, too. Now, I know you just woke, but can you tell me what happened between you and that Beacon? After it—did whatever it did—the thing exploded. The geth had a delayed charge on the thing, more carefully hidden than the nuke. It's a good thing Williams thought to move you away from the Beacon once it had done its work."

"Remind me to thank her." Nicole got out of the bed and shook out the weariness in her arms and legs. "The Beacon showed me something … images, memories, mixed up with my own. The details are fuzzy, but I saw extinction and death. I _think_ I saw Protheans dying, and … I think I saw what wiped them out. Reapers. The name was just … there. The Beacon put it there." She looked Anderson dead in the eye. "If the Beacon was supposed to do anything, it was to tell me that."

Anderson looked at her long and hard, before nodding his head. He'd come to a decision.

"We need to get this to the Council. We already need to inform them of Nihlus' murder—especially if it was perpetrated by Saren. What do you know about him?"

"A Spectre," Nicole replied automatically. With Jenkins nearby, she opted to leave out Anderson's history with the turian. "One of the Council's most decorated, most brutal, and most effective agents. Beyond what's public knowledge, I don't know much about him. I've never looked into it."

"Well, you'd best start looking into it, because we're going to the Citadel, Shepard, and we're going to hunt Saren down."

"Yes, sir. If you don't mind, could I speak to Corporal Jenkins? Alone?" Anderson looked like he wanted to say something, but he just nodded. He and Chakwas left quietly, leaving the room empty without them, empty save for two damaged soldiers. Nicole walked over to Jenkins' cot.

"You're not asleep."

"How'd you know that?" It was a fair question. She drew up a chair and sat down.

"I was raised to tell the difference between being asleep and pretending to sleep. It wasn't a pleasant upbringing," Nicole promised. He didn't ask for details. Nicole had known he wouldn't. The details didn't matter to him anymore. "I'm sorry about your back."

"What the fuck is 'sorry' gonna do, huh? I'm going to be a fucking sob story. Marines like you will look at someone like me and be fucking grateful." His face was trembling with an anger he couldn't fully understand. "Because of you."

"You would rather have died," Nicole supplied.

"Of course I'd rather have died!" He exploded at her. "At least if I had died, when people talked about me, they wouldn't talk like I was a fucking disease! I can see it already! Ashley Williams, that fucking supersoldier you found down there, she wouldn't fucking _look_ at me!"

Nicole reached out and laid her hand on his bed, palm up, fingers open. He stared into her eyes, defiantly, and turned away. Nicole took her hand back and got to her feet.

"You can't be a soldier anymore," Nicole told him. "So be something else. You've got to be something, or you'll just get lost in between things. You don't want that."

"I know what I wanted," he spat back at her.

"You can't have it. I knew what I wanted too, once." The memories of her childhood were blurred with ships, now, ships reaching through the clouds like giant hands. But she remembered playing with her brother, building models and sometimes pretending to find them in the earth. She'd been fascinated by the Protheans, once, before all that had been torn out of her. "Archaeologist. But I can't have that any more. I'm a soldier, and you're something else. It's up to you to figure out what it is."

She left him in the medical bay. It would still be weeks before he could leave.

XXX

Seeing the Citadel hanging in the Serpent Nebula, a space station left behind by a race vanished for fifty thousand years, would have filled Nicole with a sense of quiet awe, if her sense of awe hadn't been exhausted in the past few days. A part of her stirred at the thought of walking on the same station where the Protheans had ruled their empire, the base from which they had built the mass relays and enabled spaceflight for the billions that had come afterwards. If any were still around, Nicole reflected with an odd sense of detachment, she could've asked one of them about it. But there were only the insect-like keepers skittering across the surface of the Citadel in utter silence.

Anderson took her, Kaidan, and Williams to see a man named Udina, in a lovely office overlooking an artificial lake complete with an artificial park. It was by far the nicest and richest part of the Citadel, reserved for politicians and businessmen. At least some things in the universe were constant. Udina himself was an absolutely insufferable man with permanent bags under his eyes. You could tell they were permanent from the sound of his voice.

"And _why _did you bring your soldiers here? Do you really expect to storm into the Citadel Council Chambers with half your ship's crew?"

"Yes. These soldiers were there, and their evidence may be important. Commander Shepard was directly in contact with the Beacon!"

"You can understand how unconvincing an accusation will sound when you describe it as the testimony of an addled civilian and a woman who has recently been exposed to a brain-altering device that is tens of thousands of years old!" Udina made a sound of disgust and gestured at Shepard like she'd just crawled out of a sewer.

"Be that as it may," Anderson said brusquely, "We're going there. Can you get us that appointment or can't you?"

"I already did," Udina said begrudgingly. "If you can try and minimize the embarrassment the entire human race will suffer, please do. You do realize how the Alliance _looks_ right now? You're supposed to pick up a hunk of metal from an archeological dig, and you instead hand the Council a dead Spectre and the excuse that their favourite agent has committed the crime? You are aware of the _literal multitude _of powerful people you're pissing off, yes?" Nicole realized, after a moment, that he was addressing her.

"If it would have set your mind at ease," Nicole said calmly, "I could have allowed the nuke to detonate." She raised an eyebrow. "Though that might not have improved the Council's opinion." Anderson, perhaps wisely, stepped forward.

"Udina, this has to be done. If Saren's a traitor, the Council needs to know, and I trust Shepard's word." Udina actually threw up his arms in resignation.

"You trust her _word_? Oh, lovely! Submit that as evidence, then, that should speed things right along. 'Yes, Councillors, please throw Saren Arterius into a holding cell because of _Commander Shepard's_ word.' They'll look at her and see a primate with a noted history of getting her squadmates killed!"

Nicole's expression didn't change, but Anderson's did. Before, he had just been annoyed, a little irritated by the sycophant they had to endure. Now his brows knitted and the heat drained out of his face, replaced by a cold anger that was several degrees worse.

"C-Sec will find the proof that Saren's a traitor. And if they don't, I will. I guarantee you that, Ambassador Udina."

They left Udina's office as quickly as they came, which everyone was grateful for. Kaidan looked like he wanted to say something, but Shepard's expression brooked little discussion of the matter. Whatever she was thinking, she kept it to herself: and she honestly wasn't thinking anything. She didn't care what Udina said. He was nothing to her, just an obstacle between her and what needed to be done. People like him had been doing nothing since the dawn of civilization, and would likely to continue on doing so past Nicole's death. She didn't care about that, either.

They passed by countless politicians on their way to the Citadel Tower, where the Council Chambers were. All of them seemed happy, leading petty but contented lives, embroiled in whatever minor scandal was occupying their time. It felt almost surreal.

The elevator to the Tower was slightly cramped, the four of them filing in with a pair of salarian diplomats. The ride took unbearably long, waking a primal impatience in Nicole's chest. Williams glanced at her and gave a sympathetic shrug; Alenko was doing his best to seem professional and cordial. Nicole, for her part, amused herself by pretending to ignore the salarian diplomats' expressions of muted terror. They were sharing an elevator with four human soldiers, one of whom had a barbaric scar. She could practically see it on their faces.

Before they reached the Chambers themselves, they had to pass through a wide, open area filled with shallow pools, ancient monuments, and civilians of either quality. Nicole couldn't spot any security, but then again, the best security was invisible. Considerably less invisible was the pair of turians arguing in front of a fountain.

"—the investigation is _over_, Vakarian. Saren's a Spectre. Give it a rest," said one of them, clearly the authority figure. He walked away in a huff, leaving the other turian there, a tall, grey-skinned turian with blue face tattoos and a targeting visor over one eye. He narrowed his eyes as they approached and walked forward to Nicole, extending a hand.

"Commander Shepard?" Nicole blinked and nodded, taking his hand and shaking it. "Garrus Vakarian. I am—was—in charge of C-Sec's investigation into your accusation against Saren."

"What do you think?" Nicole asked him carefully.

"I think he's a dirty bastard," Vakarian said, with surprising vitriol, "And if I had the access I needed, I could prove it. Best of luck, Shepard. And, uh, to the rest of you as well," he added hastily. He left somewhat awkwardly, but Shepard was still impressed by his honesty.

When they made their way to the Council Chambers, Nicole was stunned by how open they were. The Council themselves stood on an elevated platform, but as far as Nicole could tell the room was public; there were balconies where a few interested civilians were watching.

_If an assassin managed to get in here, they'd be dead in seconds_, Nicole thought. She kept that opinion to herself, though. The Council members stepped out onto the balcony, three immaculate representatives of each council race. It took them about ten minutes to ignore, dismiss, or trivialize every bit of evidence Anderson presented. Saren appeared, but only in a holographic form, and only long enough to illustrate how thoroughly the Council was on his side. He gave them nothing but sneering contempt and the Council treated it like the word of god.

"Unless you can offer _real _proof," the asari councillor promised, "This meeting is adjourned."

The four of them left the Council Chambers feeling thoroughly discouraged and completely unsurprised. Going back to see Udina didn't exactly help matters. The man seemed to have accrued another layer of sleaze in their absence, and he took out his anger on Shepard and Anderson in turns. He didn't seem to notice Williams or Alenko were there at all.

"What did you _expect_ would happen?" He demanded. He threw out a hand at Anderson and leaned back in his chair, surveying him with tired, scrutinizing eyes. "The Council knows your history with Saren. They probably think you're just trying to get even, and you're using your favourite soldier here to do it." Nicole glanced at Anderson, who was doing an impressive job of keeping his face controlled. His hands, though, were clenched into tight fists.

"What they think doesn't matter. What matters is the truth," Anderson insisted. Udina snorted.

"They are the _Citadel Council_, what they think is _all_ that matters. Much more than your truth, at any rate. Now go find a hole to bury yourselves in somewhere. I need to try and salvage what's left of humanity's reputation."

Once they were outside, Williams looked like she'd just trod through dog shit.

"He's a real piece of work." Anderson only sighed.

"He is the genuine article, I'm afraid. But he does his job well, and we need him. In the meantime, he's right about one thing: I _do _have a history with Saren, and we can't risk that history being used as ammunition. In the meantime, dig up what you can about Saren. He operates out of the Citadel, and if you can find proof, it'll be here. I know you'll be able to track him down, Shepard. If you need any leads, there's a man who works in Chora's Den, ex-C-Sec, named Harkin. He might be able to get you started."

"Yes, sir." Nicole saluted him, and Williams and Alenko did the same. Anderson grinned and followed suit, before he turned away and left.

"So, what now?" Alenko asked, sounding vaguely hopeless. Nicole turned to him and smiled, a perfectly terrifying expression.

"Now we get to work."


	10. Chapter 10

If any of the patrons of Chora's Den noticed the three heavily armed Alliance soldiers in their midst, they didn't seem to care. Nicole moved through the tightly packed crowd with effortless authority, communicating a very dangerous impatience with nothing but the directness of her stare. Ashley and Kaidan didn't have too much of a hard time getting through the crowd, either—when someone in armor walked through, you got out of the way—but neither of them had the effect that Shepard did.

"You know," Ashley said, with forced cheer, "I bet this place isn't half bad when you're not chasing down rogue Spectres. Good music."

"It's not bad," Kaidan said politely. Shepard either hadn't heard them or wasn't bothering to make small talk. She made her way to the bar, asked a few curt questions of the barman, then directed them to Harkin's booth. Harkin, it turned out, was a balding man with a personality as thin as his hair. Shepard sat across from him, and his expression settled into a slimy leer as he glanced between Shepard and Williams. Shepard just stared.

"Well hello there, sweetheart." The slime on his grin somehow intensified. Ashley rolled her eyes, while Kaidan practically shrivelled with discomfort. "You ladies make that Alliance uniform look good." Shepard sat opposite him and signalled for Ashley and Kaidan to follow. She looked at Harkin quizzically, as though he were a mold growing on someone else's shower curtain.

"You know that saying that won't make me sleep with you, so I'm curious—are you trying to make me uncomfortable?" Harkin didn't look like he knew how to respond. "If we can dispense with this, we have business to take care of."

"Is that so?"

"Yes. I'm looking for a turian named Garrus Vakarian. He was investigating Saren." Nicole fiddled with something on her omnitool. She looked back at Harkin and added, "I'm not going to cause trouble for him, if that's what you're thinking. I want his help."

"Ooooh now I know you." Harkin drew back on a cigarette and smiled. "You're that Alliance girl who's been up in Saren's business. Figured you would've got wise by now."

"Wisdom's never been a noted trait of mine."

"You're with Anderson, right?" Harkin was enjoying the sound of his own voice. He took a drink and drew back on the cigarette again. The cigarette wasn't as cheap as Nicole would've expected; the drink was, though. "You know he has a history with Saren, don't you? Got screwed out of being the first human Spectre by the damn lizard. Shame. Still, Anderson's crazy for going after him now. Guess that's why he sent you?"

Nicole only nodded.

"That's why he sent me."

"I almost want to help you just out of spite, but there ain't no way you're gonna get shit on Saren. He's protected, you understand? Half this station's either paying him or been paid by him. You're shit out of luck, girl."

"All I need is Vakarian."

"You listening to me? Why the fuck would I even be _seen _helping someone who has very publically pissed Saren off? I hate turians as much as the next red-blooded human but you'll see me jump out the airlock before I poke a Spectre in the eye out of nothing but petty race-hate." He looked meaningfully at her. She sighed and pulled something out of a compartment in the neck of her armor. Alliance armor didn't normally have pockets, but she'd modified hers. She tossed a small piece of plastic onto the table.

"That credit chit has 2,500 on it. My expense account for this and the last mission. Vakarian. Now."

Harkin picked it up without a second thought, scanned it, smiled happily, and said with summary efficiency,

"He's looking into Dr. Michel's clinic, up in the Upper Wards. Heard she knew something about Saren, apparently. You ask around there and you should find him."

"Thank you." Nicole stood and gestured to Ashley and Kaidan. "Let's go."

Nicole walked briskly out of the bar, leaving the two soldiers under her command little opportunity to speak. When they were outside she muttered under her breath,

"Keep walking. Like you've got somewhere to go but not like you're in a hurry."

"Why, Commander?" Ashley asked. She sounded equal parts baffled and annoyed.

"Because the hack I put on their cameras is going to expire in ten seconds, and we both know I don't have an expense account."

"What _was_ on that chit, then?"

"Nothing. It's got a timed chemical reaction that'll dissolve the plastic in about thirty seconds. I saw him put it in his back pocket; he'll probably have an interesting rash on his posterior." Shepard cut effortlessly through a small group of what looked to be tourists. When they passed by Kaidan walked alongside her and hissed,

"You gave him an _explosive_?" Shepard stopped and looked him in the eye.

"No, Lieutenant. I gave him a piece of plastic that'll get real hot before turning into some very annoying glue. At worst he'd lose vision in an eye if he was pressing it to his pupil at the precise moment of its activation." She paused. "Which is now. Are we done?" The disapproval on Kaidan's face was hard to miss.

"But _why_? He's C-Sec, if word gets out—"

"That what? Someone burnt a hole in his ass? You think he'll be eager to admit he got swindled by a woman? A _military _woman?" Nicole actually chuckled, a low sound. "That'd ruin his reputation."

XXX

Dr. Michel's clinic, it turned out, was _the _Med Clinic—or at least _the _Med Clinic in the Upper Wards, District 92, which was still significant. Holographic displays near the ceiling emblazoned the name on the walls and a red line directed people to the clinic. Nicole wondered if that was a recent adaptation, or if like humans, aliens of every creed had decided that the only way to keep an anonymous body from getting lost was to use primary colours. Nicole had once watched a documentary about how most intelligent life perceived color in the same way, because red, green, and blue color detecting cones in the eye were the most likely to evolve with a highly intelligent brain. Something in that was reassuring.

As they approached the clinic, Nicole did a cursory scan of the interior using a technically illegal program in her omni-tool. She observed accelerated heart rates and high levels of aggression markers in a couple individuals of varying race.

"Weapons ready," Nicole warned, as she unslung her pistol and broke into a run with one quick movement. The door to the clinic was wired shut, but she waved her omnitool at it and it hissed open. She burst in to see Vakarian, pistol drawn, staring down three humans. One of the men had a gun to the throat of a woman in a doctor's garb.

"Get the _fuck_ on back!" The man yelled, yanking the doctor back by the hair. Garrus didn't take his eyes off the doctor, or the gun. Neither did Nicole.

"Shoot her," Nicole said, "And you have no leverage. You don't want to find out what I'm going to do to you when you don't have any leverage."

"Bullshit!" In the time it took the man to form the word, Garrus shot him in the head. He collapsed harmlessly to the ground and Nicole fired six shots; two into the chest and one into the head of each of the other two.

"Nice shot," Nicole said. Garrus stowed his pistol and gave a quirk of one of his mandibles, which Nicole took as a smile.

"You're not so bad yourself." He turned back to the doctor. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." Shock. Nicole knew the symptoms. It would be useful for now, and when the timing was right the woman could feel free to have her breakdown. Job like hers, no doubt she could afford the therapy. Garrus turned to her.

"Commander Shepard, isn't it?"

"That's right."

"This is Dr. Michel." He pointed to her. "I came because I heard she'd met someone who knew something about Saren. I'm guessing that's why you're here?"

"Actually, I came here looking for you. But I came looking for you looking for Saren, so let's just call it a happy coincidence." Nicole grinned, just barely.

"Well it's a good thing you both came looking," The doctor said weakly. She was trying very hard not to look at the dead bodies.

"Sure is." Garrus keyed something into his omnitool. "C-Sec, we have three bodies at Dr. Michel's Med Clinic in Section 92, Upper Ward. Hostiles incapacitated by myself and three Alliance marines, a Commander Shepard and…" He turned to Shepard. Shepard turned to Ashley and Kaidan.

"Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams."

"Lieutenant Kaidan Alenko, sir."

"Yeah. Send a squad over immediately." He waited for the controller at C-Sec to respond in his headset, then responded. "Yes. All right. I'm going to continue on with my investigation. You'll understand it's urgent." Another pause. "Yes. Thank you. Now, Dr. Michel, could you tell me what you planned on telling me before, well…."

"Before they came?" Dr. Michel glanced back at the bodies and shuddered. "I—I treated a quarian girl last night, named Tali. For a bullet wound. She'd said that she had some information to sell, mentioned _geth_, if you can believe it. She wanted to sell it to the Shadow Broker so I sent her to Fist. Everyone knows he's a Broker agent. Or at least … that's what I thought. But these were _his_ men! I just thought they were bouncers at the bar! Then they showed up here, if—if you all hadn't arrived when you did, I would've been—oh god."

"It's all right," Garrus said soothingly. "Just tell us what you know."

"He's a guy who goes by 'Fist.' He's not quiet about his powerful friends. I thought—I was just trying to help her. Can you—can you help her? Please?" She seemed distressed, now, and from the tears welling in her eyes, from the way her hands shook, Nicole could see the realization of what had happened dawning on her. She was starting to process it. She'd nearly just died. Three men had. "She was such a sweet girl—very friendly, so polite—and you know how hard it is for quarians, I mean …."

"Thank you," Garrus said, not unkindly. "A C-Sec crew will be along shortly. If you need anything, you can call the office, or me personally. All right?"

"All right." Michel nodded and took a seat. She breathed deeply and started muttering something under her breath, some kind of coping mechanism.

Garrus turned away somewhat awkwardly and joined Nicole and the rest at the entrance to the clinic. He looked like he wasn't entirely sure what to do with himself.

"You heard all that?"

Nicole nodded. From the hopeless look on Garrus' face, he was hoping she was going to say more. When she didn't, he blurted out,

"Look, we're both going after Saren, and frankly I'm not going to get any back-up from C-Sec. They think chasing Saren is a waste of time. We both want to find Saren, and I'm sure we both want to help the girl. If we worked together, we'd get a lot more done."

Nicole folded her arms and looked at him. On one hand, he was young, clearly inexperienced, and probably a little more reckless than was good for him. On the other, he was a good shot. And he cared. That had to mean something.

"All right," she said at long last. "You know where this 'Fist' is?" Out of the corner of her eye, Nicole caught Ashley stiffening a little, looking like she wanted to say something. Nicole wasn't sure what to make of that. Garrus started walking with them, by Nicole's side.

"He owns Chora's Den. He's supposed to be a Broker agent, but the word is he's been bought out. I thought it was just a rumor until now … _no one_ sells out the Shadow Broker."

"He calls himself 'Fist,'" Nicole said dryly. "I'm guessing he's not the Citadel's foremost master of espionage."

"Uh, right. Well, I guess we should go?"

"Right." Nicole made her way to a nearby transit car and opened it up, gesturing inside. It'd be a tight fit with all four of them. Ashley and Kaidan crammed into the back seat, and Vakarian hopped in beside Nicole. She found herself wishing turians were a great deal smaller. "Oh, and Vakarian?"

"Yeah."

"You shouldn't have been sure that we'd both want to help the girl. As it happens, we do. But you shouldn't have been sure."

XXX

"So, uh, pleasure to meet you," Garrus said, craning his head back to look at Kaidan and Ashley. Kaidan grinned sympathetically and said,

"You too. They didn't exactly build these things to fit turians, huh?"

"Afraid not. Salarians and asari were the first to the Citadel. Most of the basic infrastructure is still theirs. Always thought it was _weird_ how half the aliens in the universe look the same."

"Asari I get, but you think we look like salarians?"

Garrus shrugged as best he could in the cramped space.

"You're about the same size and your faces are flat. Salarians are a little more distinct, but…."

Kaidan laughed; Shepard glanced at Ashley in the rear-view mirror to see her looking moderately scandalized.

"I see your point."

Whatever Garrus was about to say was cut off by a buzzing blip coming from his omnitool. He checked it and listened to a message from C-Sec. His face went pale and he turned to Shepard.

"Chora's Den is being attacked. There was a bomb, and a krogan. C-Sec's on the way but—"

Shepard broke into the skycar's automatic pilot function and turned on the disabled manual drive. Without a word she veered sharply away from traffic and passed between a pair of cars, shooting directly for the high rise tower where Chora's Den was located. It was one of a new vogue of clubs that boasted exterior windows along the dance floor wall looking out over the Citadel. The windows could be turned opaque for late-night parties or privacy, but from a distance all that was visible was a plume of dark smoke.

"Security cameras?" Shepard barked.

"Out," Garrus said, trying to shuffle around to reach for his pistol in the car. Ashley and Kaidan had braced themselves against the roof, Alliance training kicking in. "With the explosion."

"Well, they probably weren't doing us any favours, anyway." The skyscraper was burning from one of the levels, a black cloud of smoke obscuring broken plate glass windows. "Alenko, Williams, I want you two in this car, rifles out to provide covering fire. Vakarian, I can't give you orders," she wove the car through a pair of transport vehicles, "But don't get in my way."

"Hang on—"

Chora's Den came into view, the black smoke thickest near the club itself. _Intentional_, Nicole noted. No bomb would give off that much smoke unless it was supposed to. She admired the efficiency; destroy the place and provide cover all in one shot. It was the sort of thing she might have done.

"Helmets on," Shepard ordered. "We don't know what the cloud's made out of."

The marines obeyed in silence. After a moment, Vakarian reached into a glove compartment, broke it open with brute force, and pulled out what appeared to be a multi-racial gas mask. Shepard keyed the car to drive to a destination level with the club floor, then pulled her own helmet over her head. Sensors flared to life before her eyes in a dazzling display of electronic blue, giving her small, information-rich readouts of the car she was in, the other occupants of the car, and tentative data about the smoke cloud. She immersed herself in the raw streams of data, was comforted by them. The car dove heedlessly into the cloud and opened up.

"Don't wait up," Nicole ordered. There was a good ten feet between the skycar and the blasted exterior of Chora's Den, and a long way down between them. They were at least sixty feet in the air. Nicole stood up, leapt out of her seat, ran down the hood of the car, and jumped. She sailed through the air and landed on Chora's Den in a crouch, wreathed in smoke. Her heads-up display informed her of nine dead bodies and two active lifeforms nearby. One human. The other was a krogan.

_Delightful_.

She stood up and walked forward through the smoke, unslinging her pistol. She hit the key in the grip to switch to incendiary rounds. As she walked into the ruined club, the thick smoke clung to her like shadowy streamers. She emerged to see a man clutching at a ruined bar, his left hand broken. The floor was strewn with bodies covered in wounds, either from burns or shotgun blasts. The shotgun belonged to the krogan, a heavily armored walking tank who kicked an overturned metal table out of his way like it was made of styrofoam. He levelled the shotgun at the human's head.

"Stay out of this, human," he warned her. He wasn't wearing a helmet, and she could see a terrible scar running through his face, and the massive red cranial plate on his skull. "You don't want to see my ugly side."

Nicole didn't put her pistol down.

"Is that Fist?" She hit a button on her pistol's grip and switched the rounds to armor-piercing.

"For about two more seconds, it is." Three things happened very quickly. The krogan raised his shotgun, Nicole pulled her trigger, and Fist simultaneously pissed and shat himself. The shotgun exploded out of the krogan's hand as Nicole's bullet pierced it through the barrel. The krogan turned to her and looked more annoyed than anything else. "All right, _pyjak_. Now you've pissed me off."

"Well, I do have a reputation to maintain." Beneath her helmet, Nicole smiled. The krogan, despite himself, was smiling, too. He reached over his shoulder to grab an assault rifle, but Nicole fired her pistol, the heavy duty rounds bursting forward like the shots of a cannon. At the last second the krogan summoned a barrier, then growled in fury as one of the bullets pierced the biotic shield and broke through his armor. He grabbed Fist by the throat, threw him against a nearby wall, and ducked behind the bar. Nicole kept shooting as she backed towards the smoke cloud, the rounds shattering the cheap steel. The krogan tossed out a grenade and got to his feet as Nicole dove back into the cloud and ducked beneath a wild spray of rifle fire. The grenade rolled towards her. Almost lazily, she kicked it away; the grenade detonated in mid-air, burning through the smoke and knocking Nicole further back into the cloud.

"Ah, it figures. _Human_. Fight with about as much guts as a salarian." He turned back towards Fist, who was scrambling for the door. "Slow down genius. You're not getting away." He flicked a hand and a biotic field slapped Fist down towards the center of the dance floor. He skidded next to a dead bouncer, another krogan. Shattered martini glasses cut into his palms.

"Please—"

"Oh, shut up," he grumbled. The krogan bent down to pick up the shotgun he'd lost. "Fuck me. Replacing this thing is probably gonna cost as much as I'm gonna make off you. You have any idea what kind of mood that puts me in?" He ground his boot into Fist's back and pressed the assault rifle to the base of his neck. "All right, human. Come out."

_«I only need to get the answer to a question from him. Then he's all yours.»_ Nicole's voice came from the club's sound system.

"Seems to me like he's all mine right now," the krogan retorted. "I tracked him down, I shot the damn guards, and in about thirty seconds, that smoke is gonna clear. What do you plan on doing then?"

_«Waiting.»_

"Come again, human? My ears don't work so well in my old age." He shoved the rifle butt against Fist's neck.

_«My guess is you meant to be gone by now. C-Sec would make this _very _complicated.»_

"If you're trying to appeal to my sunny disposition, it's not working."

_«But let's say I have a C-Sec officer working with me. Let's say I can get you out of here without so much as a fine.»_

"Let's say I can fly. I'll believe it when I see it."

_«And so you will.»_

The smoke cloud thinned enough to reveal Ashley, Kaidan, and Garrus, all kneeling in the skycar, their rifles raised. Biotic energy curled around Kaidan's fist. Nicole calmly dropped from the ceiling and landed in front of them, kneeling with her sniper rifle levelled at the krogan's head.

"The turian is C-Sec," Nicole called out, then muttered into the comm, "Vakarian, identify yourself." Garrus flashed a holographic badge, blown up to three times its usual size so that the krogan could identify it from a distance. "I just want to ask him a question."

The krogan took his time analyzing the situation. He could see that these weren't the toy soldiers Fist had drummed up—each of the men and women facing him down were trained to kill. Nicole could see the reasoning in that tough mercenary mind, could almost _feel _him concluding that this fight wasn't worth it.

"How can I trust you?"

"I'm not shooting you right now. That's trust," Nicole said dryly. There was a very long silence that was only broken by Garrus groaning onto the comm,

"_Spirits._"

The krogan, predictably, laughed. He threw down his gun, sat down on a crushed bar stool, and just chuckled to himself for a few seconds. He gestured towards Fist.

"I'm not waiting all day."

Shepard took off her helmet, stowed her sniper rifle, and walked towards the krogan. She extended a hand.

"Nicole Shepard."

He took it.

"Urdnot Wrex."

"Pleased to make your acquaintance. Now…." She turned to Fist and crouched down to look at him. "As for you…."

"Please don't let him kill me. I'll do whatever you want, I'll—"

"Good. Start with the quarian." She picked him up by the throat and dragged him to his feet. She let him go and looked into his eyes, wet with tears and blood. He reeked of human body fluids. "Your life depends on the answer."

"Tali. Her name is Tali. Saren paid me to set her up in a hotel. Some of his men are supposed to come later today and, uh, you know—"

"Kill her," Nicole finished for him. "Where's the hotel?"

"Lower Wards, District 36. It's called the _Euston_. It's new, run by humans." Nicole waited, then rolled her eyes. The only thing keeping Fist from pissing himself any further was the fact that between his crying and his pissing he was probably out of fluids to leak.

"And what _room_ is she staying in?"

"344B. It'll show up as vacant but—"

"Thank you." She turned to Wrex. "He's all yours."

"Don't mind if I do." Wrex shot him in the head. The man's blood gushed outwards, bits of brain and skull flying back. Nicole watched dispassionately. "Now, there's the little matter of my shotgun."

"I thought there might be."

"I liked that gun." The krogan inched towards her, assault rifle in hand. Utterly nonplussed, Nicole replied,

"How about we get you a new one?"

The krogan raised an eyebrow. "We?"

"We." Nicole tilted her head slightly, nodding to Fist's corpse. "You help me find the quarian girl, I'll get you a new shotgun. I'll upgrade it myself, if you like."

Wrex considered it seriously. He wasn't, Nicole was glad to learn, the type of krogan to insist on thrashing his manhood about in the place of a good deal.

"That pistol, it's your handiwork?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Shot right through my armor." Wrex regarded his own waist with mild curiosity. He was bleeding from the side—he seemed to have forgotten until just now. "Takes a hell of a sidearm to do that." He pulled a pack of medigel out of a pocket in his chest armor, tore open the tab, and pressed it to his side, squeezing the clear gel into the wound. "You know what? You've got a deal. Besides, I wouldn't mind ruining Saren's day. This _is_ all about Arterius, I'm guessing? The Broker's contact mentioned his name, but he didn't make clear how much he was involved."

"Oh," Nicole shrugged, "He's involved, all right."

XXX

"You're taking the _krogan_ with you?" Williams demanded. Nicole stopped walking down the C-Sec corridor and turned to her. A dozen people milled around them, all too busy to pay any attention to two human soldiers.

"Speak your mind."

"Commander Shepard, sir, it's just—first Vakarian, now a krogan _mercenary_? What makes you trust him?" Nicole shrugged.

"I think I've got the measure of him. He was surprised when my gun broke his armor. A good gun is worth more to him than credits. And I think he'd like the chance to help out a quarian. The philosophical krogan tend to have a soft spot for the quarians. Just about the only other race out there as pissed on as they are."

"_Philosophical_?"

"For a krogan? Yes, Gunnery-Chief, I'd say he's damn near a poet. Look." She gestured for Williams to follow her to a corner of the lounge nearby. "You and Alenko are both excellent soldiers, but you don't know the Citadel, and I _doubt_ I'll need a team of professionals to dispatch a couple of thugs hired to kill a young girl. The fact is, it's legally shaky. We don't exactly have a lot of jurisdiction up here. _Legally_, we should leave everything to C-Sec; if Vakarian wasn't covering for us, that would be the end of it. I don't want you or Alenko involved in something that could jeopardise your careers. Or your lives."

"What about you, ma'am?" Williams asked, tight-lipped. Her jaw was clenched so tightly that it might as well have been wired shut. Her posture was ramrod straight, her hands clamped to her sides. She looked Nicole right in the eye, which Nicole appreciated.

"Unfortunately, as your commanding officer, I get to be the one to take the big stupid risk. You know how it is. One day you might have the pleasure."

"Ours but to do and die," Ashley muttered, trying not to look sullen. She knew the reality of the situation, and accepted it, but the part of her that was a soldier, the part of her that _refused_ to stand down, wasn't taking it well.

"That's Tennyson, right?" Williams looked startled.

"Yes. Sorry, ma'am, you didn't strike me as the poetry-reading type."

"I dally a little." Nicole shrugged. "I prefer the turians, to be honest."

"Turian poetry." Williams laughed. "I'd pay to see that."

"You wouldn't have to. It's illegal to sell turian poetry; it can only be read or distributed freely. They consider it necessary for their civilization."

Ashley's military posture slackened, just a little, so that she seemed a little more relaxed. She was a little bit shorter than Shepard—or perhaps she only seemed that way, since Shepard's posture, without conscious decision, was always perfectly upright. Shepard remembered that Ashley had not so long ago seen terrible things, seen the husks crawling off their spires, seen her squadmates die. It was amazing that she was so stable. After a moment, if only to break the silence, Ashley asked,

"What happens if someone does try to sell their poetry?"

"Forced labour. The turians never fail to put a criminal to good use."

XXX

When Shepard and Wrex walked into the hotel, they drew a couple prolonged looks from the receptionist. Even in civilian clothing neither of them looked quite like normal guests. Wrex was a krogan, which naturally made him suspicious; Shepard just looked like a soldier, no matter what she wore. But no one said anything. It might be frightening to see a pair of physically impressive, visibly scarred warriors walk through your door, but even more frightening was the thought of talking to them. Shepard keyed a command into the elevator and stepped inside.

She was wearing an old leather jacket over a simple red shirt. The jeans she wore were slightly faded, but reasonably fashionable. More to the point, they concealed a skintight mesh bodysuit, projecting a short-range kinetic barrier and providing enough conventional protection to turn the blade of most knives. Wrex, meanwhile, was wearing a suit which might as well have been armor—but he was a krogan, so no one even noticed.

"This is our stop," Nicole said, and stepped out onto the hotel floor. The lighting in the long corridor was dim, and though cheap art was strewn liberally along the walls, Nicole couldn't help but be reminded of Shadowhill. There was a door leading to a room every few feet along the corridor, just like there had been in Shadowhill's interrogation wing. Shadowhill had always smelled of chlorine, of chemicals used to keep the place utterly spotless; the hotel had a false, flowery fragrance to it. That was the biggest difference Nicole could cling to, yet somehow the smell bothered her the most of all. She tried to put the thought behind her.

"You know, we make a cute couple," Wrex said. Nicole glanced at him to see his shovel-sized mouth was turned up in a grin. "Matching face decoration and all that. Does yours ever itch? Mine itches like all _hell_ when it rains." He grumbled to himself. "Can't imagine why."

"Not really. Guess humans scar differently."

"More frequently, too," Wrex pointed out. He laughed under his breath. Nicole remembered the scar just above her lip—Wrex hadn't even seen the thick crosshatching of scars on her arms. She felt an old insecurity bubbling up beneath her consciousness, but she clamped down on it, using the training Shadowhill had instilled with her. Not the Alliance—the Alliance did its best, but they weren't in the business of rewiring brains. Shadowhill had been, and the simple fact was that the wiring was still useful, sometimes.

They came to the quarian's room. Nicole looked at Wrex, and he nodded. Nicole knocked on the door with the back of her knuckles. The rapping sound echoed down the hall, and Nicole suddenly felt how empty it was.

There was no answer. Nicole leaned close to the door and said,

"Tali? Tali'Zorah nar Rayyah? Are you all right in there? The Broker sent us." Wrex looked at her, and Nicole shrugged. They waited a moment, and the door slid open. On the other side was a quarian holding a shotgun, with a combat drone hovering in the air behind her. Like all quarians, she wore a full-body exosuit, and a mask that hid her face—but it didn't take an N7 marine to realize that she was terrified. Wrex chuckled, and said in a surprisingly soothing tone,

"Easy, girl. We're not trying to hurt you."

"Is that so? Fist said he'd contact me personally."

"Fist is dead," Wrex informed her. "For trying to sell you out."

"Check the extranet. C-Sec's civilian information site should do it," Shepard said, her voice softer than usual. Tali backed up a little and checked her omnitool, still not letting go of her shotgun. She looked back at them. For the briefest moment, Shepard could understand why people distrusted quarians; that mask made them impossible to read. She was stunned by the thought a moment later. Was that Gabreau talking? Or was she really—

_Ignore it. Move on. Focus._

"Why would you care if Fist sold me out?" Tali didn't sound convinced.

"Well, I wouldn't, but it turned out the Shadow Broker doesn't like it when his agents turn on him. That's why he hired me."

"What about her?" Tali jerked her shotgun towards Shepard.

"I'm an Alliance marine, and I think Saren is a traitor. I'm trying to convince the Council, and I heard you might have proof. More to the point, we know that Saren doesn't want anyone to hear what you have to say. We think he's going to send someone to kill you. We want to help."

Shortly thereafter, Shepard found herself sitting on the end of Tali's bed, with her pistol levelled at the door. Fortunately, the hotel didn't have the best weapons detection protocol—_unfortunately_, that meant that Tali's assassins would be armed, too. Wrex stood by the door, with Tali's shotgun levelled at it. Tali hadn't been eager to give it up, but Wrex had assured her that it was best that the walking tank hold the weapon. She was crouched behind him, in a corner, knees hugged to her chest. Every now and again she entered something into her omni-tool, and her combat drone responded. There were windows on the far side of the room, and the sunlight slashed in between the curtains, landing on Nicole's face. It was annoying.

"Do you have any idea when they're going to show up?"

"None," Nicole said. Her jacket was getting uncomfortably hot. "Trust me, it would've been a whole lot more convenient for us if we'd just happened in on your assassins."

"Heh. You only get one last-minute interruption per day, Shepard. Otherwise you're just tempting fate."

"What does he mean by that?" Tali asked. Nicole didn't know quite how to put it. After a moment she said,

"It's been a long day."

The minutes stretched into hours. Occasionally Tali or Wrex would make some attempt at small talk, but Tali was too nervous to keep it up and Wrex's heart wasn't really in it. Nicole wanted to ask Tali what she knew about the geth—but to do that now seemed a little macabre. Nicole was again struck with the realization that she didn't have many stories to tell.

"Hey," she said. Tali looked up at her. "You're going to be okay, all right?" Tali didn't say anything. Nicole looked to Wrex, then back to the door.

The hours passed in stillness, and the small room became smaller. Tali hadn't furnished the room. That made sense, as she hadn't planned to stay there. It left the room feeling cold and sterile. Shepard's jacket was too warm, and she started to sweat. The thin mesh armour clung to her skin and made her feel sticky, but she couldn't take the time to take off her jacket; the odds that the assassins would come when she removed the jacket were low, but Nicole refused to take even that chance. To amuse herself she flicked the settings on her pistol, between armor-piercing, incendiary, and shield-disrupting rounds.

When it was fully dark out, Nicole heard footsteps in the halls. She and Wrex tensed, but it was nothing. Just someone returning to another room. Tali had fallen asleep. Wrex looked back at her.

"If there's nothing to shoot at in about ten minutes, I'm gonna join her."

"Not what I'm used to, either," Nicole admitted. "Normally it's a lot more 'Secure this landing zone' or 'Take out that anti-aircraft battery.'"

"I would _kill_ for an anti-aircraft battery right now." He tapped the side of his shotgun, then added, "Or some aircraft, for that matter. Nice, big targets."

"A half-decent sniper can take out most small aircraft anyway."

"Yeah, right. If the sniper rifle's hooked up to a mounted AI."

"I've done it."

Wrex stared very meaningfully at her.

"Bullshit."

She stared back.

"It's how I got promoted to N5."

"Uh-huh."

"The record's public. You can check it any time you like."

"Do I strike you as a man inclined to checking records?"

"You do, actually."

They lapsed back into silence. Wrex looked like he might shoot the door out of spite. Ten minutes passed. Then another ten. Then….

Footsteps. Nicole could hear them down the hall. She tightened her grip on the pistol. Wrex raised his shotgun with more of a professional attitude, but his expression did not convey great expectations.

There was a knock on the door. A flanged, turian voice echoed into the room.

"Tali'Zorah nar Rayyah? Open up. It's the Broker's men."

Tali woke with a start. She looked between Wrex and Shepard, head turning on a swivel; Shepard nodded at her without taking her eyes off the door.

"C-Come in."

"Thanks, sweetheart."

The door slipped open to reveal three turians, all of them armed. There was an absurd moment where they stood framed in the doorway, mouths agape, before the leader said,

"Oh, shit!" He moved to grab his gun, but Wrex blasted him into the side of the door. Nicole shot the other two in the skull, not bothering to rise from her seated position. They fell over, dead.

"Finally!" Wrex stowed his shotgun and shook his arms out.

Shepard walked over to where Tali was and offered her a hand. After a moment the quarian girl took it and was pulled to her feet. She was surprised; she hadn't expected Shepard to be so strong. Shepard actually smiled, and it was a strange thing on her face, but it was comforting and kind. Her scar ran into one of her dimples and managed to seem less frightening.

"If you don't mind, could you come with me, for a little while longer, and tell me what you know?"

Hidden behind a mask, Tali nodded decisively, and Shepard knew exactly how she felt.

"I'll tell you everything I can. The _bosh'tet_ _did_ try to have me killed, after all."

In the corner of the room, Wrex grunted in approval.

"That's the spirit."

XXX

Nicole met up with Anderson at Udina's office, with not only her own soldiers, but Tali, Garrus, and Wrex as well. Tali needed to give Udina her information, and Wrex wasn't likely to give Nicole a moment's privacy until she replaced his shotgun. Garrus, meanwhile, just wanted to be there when Saren went down. Nicole didn't blame him.

"I'm warning you three now," Nicole said, over one shoulder, "Since you didn't have the pleasure. Udina is a very trying sort of man."

The door to his office hissed open before any of them had a chance to ask what that meant. Anderson was already standing there, in front of Udina's desk. He looked terrible, tired, and annoyed. Udina must have been in excellent form. The fake plastic plants in his office seemed somehow offensive; one was six feet tall. What sort of person kept plastic plants that were six feet tall? His office overlooked the natural gardens on the Presidium filled with plantlife from a dozen worlds, but he had to have a pair of plastic, leafy plants in cheap imitation of something tropical from Earth.

"Oh, good, it's Commander Shepard! You've managed to double the size of this ridiculous enterprise; I'm impressed! I thought you'd been cocking the whole damn thing up on your own!"

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Nicole replied. "Lacking a cock, as I do."

"Oh, you're funny. You're _very_ funny," Udina muttered. He stood up and started to pace. "I'm trying to think of which made me laugh more—finding out that Chora's Den had been _detonated_, or that you had been there! And to make matters even better, now I find out you've gone and _recruited_ the bloody terrorist responsible!" He flung a hand at Wrex derisively. Wrex looked honestly insulted.

"Terrorist? I was just doing a job. And I'm just here for my gun." Nicole rolled her eyes, Anderson looked amused, and Udina growled in what must have been an orgasm of bureaucratic exasperation.

"Are you quite finished?" Nicole asked. Udina just glared at her, which Nicole took as a 'yes.' She turned back and waved Tali forward. The quarian inched towards her, clearly not eager to endure one of Udina's tantrums. Nicole smiled at her, which seemed to be enough. "This is Tali'Zorah nar Rayyah. She's quite a talented young engineer, and she has information that can help us."

"Why would a quarian leave the flotilla?" Udina asked immediately. His eyes narrowed. Gone was the posturing; at least he could get down to business.

"I'm on pilgrimage. It's a custom among my people," Tali explained. Her voice was a little panicky, but she settled down as she spoke. "We leave the flotilla and search for anything that might be useful to the fleet. I heard some reports of geth, so I thought if anything was useful, that had to be. I found a geth and managed to extract its memory core."

"How'd you do that?" Anderson asked, genuinely curious. "All the geth we've encountered fry their circuits once they're incapacitated."

"My people _built_ the geth. I knew what to look for, and I was lucky enough to find a geth unit isolated. They're not that bright when they're separated from the rest of the geth consciousness. By the time I managed to access the core, _most _of the data had been purged, but the audio banks—"

"While this is all _fascinating_," Udina interrupted, in a tone that said he thought it was anything but, "I fail to see what it has to do with Saren?"

"Geth attacked Eden Prime," Nicole said tersely, "And Tali has proof of a link between the geth and Saren. Tali, go on."

Tali turned on her omnitool, and then, in the unsettlingly peaceful arena of Udina's office, Saren's voice rang out like a metallic call to arms,

_«Despite the interference, Eden Prime was a victory. We can do without the beacon; with the data we extracted, we _are _still closer to the Conduit.»_

"Saren," Anderson hissed. It sounded like an accusation.

"There's a little more," Tali said. "Saren wasn't working alone."

_«And more importantly_,_»_ a female voice whispered, as seductive as cool wind on a hot day, _«Closer to the return of the Reapers.»_

"Do we know who that other voice is? Or who the Reapers are?" Udina asked. Nicole kept her thoughts on the vision to herself. _Reapers_. She'd barely been sure what she'd been seeing, but the name _Reaper _was burned into her head in the dozen languages she spoke fluently.

"According to the core, the Reapers were a hyper-advanced machine race that existed 50,000 years ago. According to the geth core," Tali repeated, sounding like she didn't quite believe it, "The Reapers hunted the Protheans down, wiped them out, then vanished themselves."

"Do you _really _believe that?" Udina could have been talking to a child. Shepard held her tongue about what _she _believed. She believed that the Reapers had done much worse than wipe out the Protheans—she didn't know why, she didn't know the details, but she _knew _it, as surely as she knew that Delilah Vargas was dead.

"I only _know_," Tali said, choosing the word pointedly, "That the geth think the Reapers are gods, or a mechanical version of a god. They're supposed to be the ultimate non-organic life, and the geth believe that Saren knows how to bring the Reapers back."

"You don't honestly think that the Council will pay serious attention to a conspiracy theory?" Udina demanded.

"I don't care," Nicole said flatly. She did care, actually, but she didn't sound like it. "I only care about the link that this recording _proves_ between Saren and the geth. This is our proof. The Council doesn't need to know about the rest."

"The Council should know, Nicole," Anderson said, temporarily forgetting that they were in public. He was looking at her in that way of his, looking like—she wasn't sure. Was he sad? "You saw the Reapers in a vision caused by Prothean technology. We can't just ignore that!"

"They will." Udina and Shepard said the same thing at the same time, though while Udina sounded annoyed, Shepard was just stating the truth. "We can't afford to let them derail us and call us crazy."

"Commander Shepard, perhaps I underestimated you," Udina admitted. For the first time, Nicole looked at him, _really_ looked at him, into his eyes with her emerald greens. That stare could've knocked down a rhino.

"We can only hope the Council do, as well." She smiled like her mouth was a knife. "Gives me the advantage."

XXX

The Council, it turned out, _did_ underestimate Nicole. She suspected they only bothered to hear her out once more because they might get a kick out of watching the human flounder about in front of them. Instead she delivered evidence, verified by a half-dozen tech experts—including herself—that Saren was working actively with the geth, apparently believed in these "Reapers," and was being aided by what turned out to be some asari matriarch. They'd declared Saren a traitor on the spot, stripped about every rank and title from him and then they'd made her a Spectre. It was really just an excuse to send her off to hunt Saren, but still. The first human Spectre. It had been a long speech, and she'd knelt for so long that her knees were still a little sore.

She'd almost wanted to laugh. She wasn't sure she really qualified as human, and she hated speeches. Gabreau had loved speeches, and given them to her regularly. By the time Nicole had been made a Spectre, she was eager to never see the Council again. The bigger surprise had come just afterwards: Anderson was giving her the ship. She suspected Udina's hand in this, but in a demonstration of wisdom—or self-preservation—Udina hadn't been there. Anderson herself told her that he was too close to Saren to join her; Nicole knew that, of course. She knew the whole story, how Anderson himself had once been a Spectre candidate, had been sent to work with Saren: and how Saren had, in the end, ensured that Anderson would never be a Spectre. She'd known that for years.

It had still been strange to see Anderson standing at the _Normandy's_ dock, leaving them behind. Stranger still to walk aboard it with three additions to their crew. Garrus had wanted to come along to hunt Saren, Tali wanted to join a top-of-the-line frigate to study during her pilgrimage, and Wrex, apparently, wanted to stay where the action was. She'd gotten him his shotgun, and showed him some of her own modifications for weight, kickback, and armor-piercers. He'd been impressed, and declared on the spot that he was joining the crew.

More than a few people aboard weren't happy about that. Nicole was just settling in to Anderson's quarters—her own quarters, now—when Ashley came looking. She stood at attention in the doorway.

"Come in." Nicole was entering commands into a dedicated computer at her desk, taking care of some last-minute filing, from the change in command. Anderson's relief hadn't exactly been done by protocol; normally there was a ceremony.

"Thank you, Commander," Ashley began. Nicole didn't look up from the computer, and she just sort of stood there, looking expectantly at Shepard. "Well, um…."

"You came here to say something?"

"Yes, Commander." She waited again, but Nicole continued to work. A little hopelessly, she went on, "It's about the new additions to the crew, Commander."

"Yes?"

"Well—it's not Tali, so much, but Vakarian and Wrex."

"What about them?" Nicole sent off the last of a few registry files, as well as a personal message to Anderson. It was text—Nicole always sent messages in text.

"Commander, permission to speak freely?"

"Always," Nicole said, with the casual authority that made it true. She finally looked up from her work, expectantly.

"I'm not sure they should be given the full run of the ship. This is the most advanced ship we have—the most advanced ship the _Alliance_ has. This is a human mission. It was human colonists on Eden Prime." Ashley's eyes looked haunted. She must have known some of those human colonists, before they'd been turned into metallic husks. Better than anyone, Nicole knew that you couldn't just _get over_ that kind of trauma.

"And it was a turian spectre whom Saren shot in the head," Nicole pointed out. Her tone, somehow, was even _more_ neutral than usual—dangerously so. "Each of them was crucial in tracking down evidence against Saren."

"Commander, that may be true, but how can you vouch for their loyalty? We don't know them, and they both have their own loyalties. When their backs are to the wall, I just don't know if they'll fight with us the way that Kaidan would."

Nicole, finally, stood. She left her seat with the easy, unfolding grace of a natural predator, and surveyed Ashley without feeling. Ashley couldn't help but stare at the scar. Nicole was covered in scars, but there was only one scar which was _the_ scar, the huge gash cut into her face. She had been cut when she was young, but the scar had stretched and grown with her; it now appeared to have been made by some impossibly large claw.

"When you are on the ground, you will be with me, whoever else is joining us. Do you trust me, Ashley?"

"Yes, ma'am." Not a moment's hesitation. That was good.

"Well, I'm willing to give them a chance. They are allies, and humanity needs allies. If they turn out to be unworthy of trust, then they will be dealt with. But for now, they're members of our crew," Nicole said, with utter finality. Ashley nodded.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Oh, by the way, Williams, I have something for you." Nicole walked over to a duffle bag in the corner and pulled something out of it. Williams tried to mask her astonishment with mild curiosity. Nicole emerged and handed her a few sheets of paper—actual, wood-pressed paper. "Turian poetry. Thought you might like it."

"Uh, thanks, Commander." Ashley accepted the poems a little awkwardly.

"It loses something in English, but it's still beautiful in its own way. Not much like Tennyson, I'm afraid."

"Right. Thanks again."

Nicole nodded her head just slightly, which Ashley took as a dismissal. Nicole returned to her computer and looked back over the data the Council had sent her. Apparently, the matriarch in the recording was named Benezia. She had a daughter named Liara T'Soni, an archeologist and leading prothean expert. Even if she knew nothing about her mother's activities, she was bound to be useful. Nicole had already plotted the course for Therum, where the asari was supposed to be studying some ruins.

Her paperwork done, Nicole reclined in her chair and finally relaxed. She keyed a command into her omnitool, and soft violin music played through the sound system in her quarters. In one corner of the room, a violin case was propped, carefully, against the wall. Vargas' violin finally had a little breathing room after spending months in her locker. Alliance specs said otherwise, but Nicole was convinced a storage locker was no place for a musical instrument. She had no idea how to play it, but that was beside the point.

The hanar loved the violin. According to a popular legend, the first time a hanar had heard one, it had wept. Not tears, of course, just projections of mournful light. But the feeling was the same. The feeling was always the same.

The music always brought back memories, but never the ones she expected. She was nine, and she'd fought with her father. She couldn't remember what it had been about, probably something stupid and petty, but her brother had comforted her. His face was a mystery through the fog of memory, but he shared her red hair and bright green eyes. He always smiled. Once, she had snuck into the clinic and watched him perform a check-up for a young boy. He smiled so gently, always carefully and calmly explained things. He had been funny. She couldn't remember any of his jokes, but she knew he had been funny.

He'd been one of the first to realize the batarians had been coming, and ordered her to hide. He said everything would be okay, that he would be okay. It was probably the only time he'd ever lied to her. She'd seen the recording of his death. He'd died trying to protect the infirmary, trying to buy time, flinging himself in front of a patient who was gunned down moments later. Nicole regarded the memories through a film, as though they were unreal. Shadowhill stood between her and all that, like a gruesome sentry in her dreams.

XXX

"XGS-012, state your name," A voice instructed. Nicole was in a small, sterile room, staring into a mirror. There was someone on the other side, observing her. She sat in an uncomfortable chair and tried to keep her back straight. She was fifteen.

"Nicole Shepard."

"XGS-012, how many men have you killed?"

"Five," Nicole replied. She knew the right answer to this question—she couldn't include the turians, or the batarians, or the couple of krogan. He'd asked about 'men.' Only humans were men and women.

"Good. How many women?"

"Six."

"Good. Why did you kill these people?"

"Because I was directed to by program supervisors," Nicole recited. That was the right answer. "I am an agent of Shadowhill. I will obey."

She stared into the mirror, into her own eyes. No expression. No feeling. Just the facts. The facts were all she could afford. Once weekly, they put her in this room. She was determined, this time, that she would not be tortured for long. She had learned. She would do better. She would outsmart them.

"If ordered to, would you kill again?"

"If I was ordered by a program supervisor," Nicole responded immediately. Perfect control of her own heart rate. Palms on the table, flat, unshaking. No emotion. None.

"How many aliens have you killed?" The voice sounded bored.

"Twenty-two," Nicole recited, "Including the two aliens I shot on Mindoir." She'd almost said "batarians." Never identify the race—she'd learned that one a long time ago.

"What differentiated them?" The voice was sharp with heightened interest. Despite herself, Nicole had to swallow before she answered again.

"That was before I was an agent of Shadowhill. Those targets were not approved by program supervisors."

"Good."

Nicole was glad the interview was over. It took all her strength to keep her composure. The interview was always the last task of the day, so she was marched back to her room and sealed inside. She laid down in the small rectangle of her bed. After a moment, she hacked the camera and sound system temporarily, and, finally, cried. Her entire body shook as she wept into her pillow and tried not to scream.


	11. Chapter 11

Small talk was one of the hardest things Nicole had ever had to do. Even before, when she'd just been a child, she'd never been good at it. Despite a great deal of time spent trying to master the art, she simply had no talent for it. Silence was such an easy refuge. Her face and scars and skin did enough talking for the rest of her.

Lucky For her, then, that Greg Adams, the _Normandy's _chief engineer, was something of a blabbermouth, and didn't mind holding a one-sided conversation. Nicole only had to nod at the appropriate time. The engineering room was open, but cramped with equipment and computers, leaving little space to talk. They were perched between the primary maintenance console and the mass effect drive, the gigantic, pulsing sphere that rested quietly in suspension in a large, open chamber.

"Anyway, we really do appreciate you coming down here. A commanding officer _should_ know what's going on in the belly of her ship."

"How's Tali doing?" Nicole asked. The question was so sudden that Engineer Adams jumped a little in surprise.

"Well, Commander, she's a natural. Kid's a quicker study than just about anyone I ever met. Guess it comes from growin' up on the Flotilla." Adams shrugged. "She seems like a good kid. Could be handy to have around, too. She's got a real mind for the software side of things. Most kids just learn the 'how' of all the technology, not the 'why.' It's good to have someone who knows the 'why,' if you get my meaning."

Nicole actually smiled, though the turn of her lips was so faint as to be barely perceptible.

"I think I do. I'd like to go speak with her."

"Of course, Commander. She's just over there." Adams pointed to one corner of the engine room. Nicole thanked him and squeezed her way through to what turned out to be a short walkway just around the corner, leading to an overhang within the eezo core's chamber.

"Tali'Zorah?"

The girl had been fiddling away with her omnitool, leaning out over the railing. She turned around in surprise and said,

"Oh! Um, Tali is fine, Commander Shepard."

"Then 'Nicole' is fine, too," Nicole said wryly. She couldn't' see Tali's face, but she could tell the quarian was blushing. Her stance pulled a little in towards herself, and she massaged one wrist with her free hand.

"Um, that would feel a little strange, Commander."

Nicole rested against the back of the railing, so that she was next to Tali. She was a little encouraged, at least, when Tali didn't inch away from her. Most people did. For years, Nicole hadn't minded, but for some reason she suddenly found herself glad that Tali wasn't afraid of her.

"Why's that?" Nicole asked, her tone more conversational than she'd ever managed to force it to be.

"I guess, I just … you're so, intimidating? _Keelah se'lai,_ that was the wrong word." Tali did that quarian blush again, shrinking her shoulders back.

"That's all right," Nicole said. She didn't realize it, but she was grinning, just a little. Her scar tugged at her cheek a little, and she realized. She tried not to stop, but once she knew she was smiling, she could never keep it up. The smile vanished.

"No, I mean, you're so _strong_ and, I really respect you!" Nicole honestly didn't know what to say. "It's just, you're kind of … I mean, even your _clothes _are … ignore me."

Nicole glanced down at the clothing she was wearing, mostly the same stuff she'd worn on the stakeout in the hotel. She didn't have many civilians clothes, and after Shadowhill she tried to avoid uniforms. Luckily Alliance regulations were a little more lenient aboard starships.

"What about my clothes?" Nicole asked honestly. She was baffled; Tali was burying her face in her hands.

"Forget I said anything!"

"It's _fine_, Tali, I promise. Hey." Nicole waved at her, and Tali peeked out between her fingers. "I really don't mind. Honest."

"You just look tough. That's all I meant. Was trying to say. I'm going to stop talking now."

"Please don't." Nicole was smiling again. She remembered not to notice this time. "I'm terrible at it." Nicole glanced over one shoulder to the eezo core. "So what do you make of the _Normandy_?"

"Oh, it's the most amazing ship I've ever seen! It's so quiet, and the tech is so _new_. I promise I won't send anything to the flotilla without telling you about it, but this ship is a _goldmine_. I feel like I've learned more today than I have in the past year!"

"That's good to hear. How about the crew, are you settling in well with them?"

"Mm-hmm! Some of them don't trust me much, but it's better than most places." Tali's frank tone would've shocked Nicole a little, if she was anyone else. But she knew the way the universe worked. "Engineer Adams is _really _nice."

"He is."

They fell into silence for a moment. Nicole was glad that Tali seemed to be doing well. She'd just nearly been murdered—twice—and had three turians killed in front of her eyes. Apparently she wasn't that surprised by the violence. She was no soldier, but she could take care of herself.

"Do you do that sort of thing a lot?"

"What sort of—oh." Nicole shrugged. "It's what I do."

"Right." Tali's voice quavered. "Are you ever afraid?"

Nicole didn't know how to answer that. In battle, she didn't really process emotions—she assessed a flow of data, absorbed it, understood it, and solved it. Even when she killed someone she was detached. It was what she'd been trained to do. She was only afraid afterwards, when the fighting was done. Then memories might come, of Shadowhill or Akuze, or any of a dozen places where she'd let people down and gotten them killed. Every time someone walked into danger under Nicole's command, in the deepest part of her, she was terrified.

"Yes. Everyone's afraid sometimes."

"Do you think you'll be afraid when you go down there? To Therum?"

"No. Not really. There shouldn't be any real danger down there. Just a scientist."

"A scientist whose mother is working for Saren," Tali muttered darkly.

"She can't control that. As far as we know, she's a perfectly ordinary archaeologist excavating some Prothean ruins. Albeit, one who received not-insubstantial combat training," Nicole admitted. "But that's not rare for asari—particularly not for a matriarch's daughter."

"What if she is involved?"

"Well, like you said." Nicole rolled her shoulders and almost threatened to smile. "I'm tough."

XXX

"Shepard! You! Are! Insane!" Ashley's yelling was punctuated by a series of brutal jolts accompanying each rough shift in terrain on Therum's surface. Nicole manoeuvred the Mako, the giant, heavily armored and armed vehicle, as though it were a jeep-shaped battering ram. In her hands, it might as well have been.

She and Wrex were smiling, identically.

"Hey, Joker! Tell Tali we might have some more geth for her to analyze!" Nicole said cheerfully into the comm system. She drove the Mako up over a cliff, launched it through the air with its boosters, and landed atop a pair of geth soldiers firing futilely into the armor-clad hull. Inside the gunner's turret, Ashley swore loudly.

"Watch that lava flow!" Wrex blurted.

"You think I'm _not_ watching it?" Nicole swerved the Mako out of the way and back onto the narrow path leading towards the Thrum dig site. With sudden, laser-like precision, she barked, "Williams, 10-o-clock, anti-tank!"

Ashley fired the gun immediately, and the shot connected, impossibly, with a geth armature unit just as it landed on the surface. The shell from the Mako's main gun had knocked the tank-class geth off of its four legs, and into a lava flow. The dropship that had deployed the geth hulk floated away harmlessly.

"Good shooting, Ashley," Nicole said idly, turning the Mako on a dime to fit it down the path surrounded by molten, blazing rock.

"Good eye. Didn't think that was actually going to work."

It nearly hadn't. Nicole had needed to compensate for Therum's relatively high gravity—but saying as much would sound like bragging. More important was that Ashley had acted, immediately, on Nicole's orders.

"Shame we can't take that gun in with us," Wrex rumbled, sounding like he hadn't entirely discarded the notion.

"If you can lift it," was all Nicole said. She had a remarkable talent for sounding casual in the midst of gunfire; she might have been describing the weather.

They pulled to a stop in front of a long mineshaft, penetrating deep into the earth. The extranet feeds had said that most of the Prothean site on Therum was subterranean; buried beneath shifting layers of cooled molten rock and constantly threatened by the possibility of an eruption. It occurred to Nicole that not just any scientist would willingly come to a planet like this. T'Soni was either admirably brave, or dangerously crazy—or both. She pulled her helmet down over her face, was submerged in her heads-up display, and felt at peace. Ashley and Wrex followed suit. Now that they'd found geth, she was grateful she'd taken the two most experienced combat experts in her squad.

XXX

The mining tunnel itself didn't go very deep, before it led to a rickety prefabricated elevator that looked hastily constructed. It was already on the bottom floor when they arrived, and had to be called up.

"Shit. If the geth already got to the doctor…." Nicole shook her head.

"The geth might be here _with_ the doctor," Wrex pointed out. Very patiently, he unholstered his shotgun. He hit the switch Nicole had installed to enable a very nasty breed of armor-piercing round.

"Wrex has a point. If mommy's working with Saren, it mightn't have been too much trouble to round up a squad of geth to deal with the pesky Alliance invaders."

"Alliance invaders plus one. I'm strictly here for pleasure," Wrex insisted. Ashley sighed, but didn't say anything.

"I don't know about you, but I don't feel dealt with," Nicole replied. "If she's in league with the geth, we interrogate her. If the geth are trying to kill her, we rescue her. Either way she's an asset."

The elevator led them to another tunnel, opening up to a massive cavern, clearly the excavation site. A huge mining laser was installed on the floor, and on the far side of the giant space the rock walls gave way to a bizarre structure utterly unlike anything Nicole had ever seen, with a single exception: the Prothean beacon. Even if the building didn't look like the same design, Nicole would have known the place just from the feeling. There was a faint pounding in the back of her skull. The walls were made of the same strange metal, bluish in tint and glowing a faint green along lines, and there were a number of cells, almost like rooms in a giant multi-level hotel.

On the bottom-most level, one of the cells was blocked by a bluish energy field. It was still far-off, but Nicole could almost make out a shape inside it—a vaguely human shape.

_Not human_, Nicole realized. _Asari_.

"Hello! Hello!"

Nicole signalled to Wrex and Ashley and moved forward, carefully approaching the Prothean structure. As they drew close Nicole really got an impression of how big it was. It was easily the size of a skyscraper, half-submerged in rock. When they drew close, they could see a young asari suspended, spread-eagled, in mid-air. She was wearing a lab coat and a look of reasonably collected panic. Nicole tried to focus on what she was saying, but the second she grew close to the Prothean building, a shudder passed down her spine. A sharp pain flared up behind her eyes, and then was gone.

"You're Alliance! Oh, thank the goddess." The asari sagged in relief. She must have identified the red N7 stripe on Nicole's armour. Nicole tried to ignore another spike of pain. "I was afraid you might be more geth or mercenaries, when I saw the krogan."

"Nice to meet you, too," Wrex intoned. Nicole was beginning to identify that rumble in his voice as amusement. Nicole stepped forward and took off her helmet, hoping both that it would set the asari at ease, and that it might stop those flashes of pain.

"Are you Liara T'Soni?" Nicole asked, in the _Siin_ dialect T'Soni was speaking. Liara didn't notice that Nicole was speaking her language, perhaps just thought it was her translator doing the job.

"Yes, I am." She seemed calm, if a little flustered. Nicole couldn't blame her; she was trapped inside a Prothean energy field beneath a volcano.

"I'm Commander Nicole Shepard, a Council Spectre," Nicole informed her. She couldn't help but enjoy the surprise on Liara's face; she was so expressive, clearly unused to hiding her feelings. "You mentioned geth—and mercenaries?"

"Yes! There has been a krogan mercenary named Karn, leading the geth! They were listening to him, following his orders!"

"Karn. That son of a bitch," Wrex spat. "If you had a conversation with him, I find it very surprising that you're alive." Wrex stressed the last word, almost like a threat. Nicole turned to him slightly, not saying anything.

"That is why I am in my current … predicament. Each of these rooms is equipped with a Prothean energy curtain, something well beyond our own technology. I managed to activate it before Karn was able to reach me, but there was an, um, unintended side-effect." Her cheeks turned a light purple and she suddenly looked away from Shepard's eyes.

"That was resourceful. But we haven't seen Karn, and I doubt he just called it quits once you turned on a bit of Prothean tech," Nicole said evenly. Liara seemed a little encouraged by the compliment.

"He was trapped behind me, further into the Prothean structure. There is an elevator, and an upper chamber which leads to the surface. He is trying additional means of accessing me, and the methods he has proposed are not pleasant." She was obviously trying not to, but the asari sounded afraid. Nicole felt the absurd desire to reach out and tell her everything would be all right. Instead she resolved to simply make sure that everything really _would_ be all right.

"Is there any way to get you out of there?" Nicole asked.

"Only behind me. I am worried Karn may figure that out, but he has been having difficulty accessing the Prothean controls. I, obviously, cannot, because of, well—you know." Liara looked like she was trying to gesture vaguely around her, but she only wound up wiggling her fingers. She blushed again and hissed something beneath her breath. Nicole smiled without meaning to, then immediately stopped, worried the asari would get the wrong impression. Beneath the icy film of mission readiness in her mind, Nicole felt a strange regret twisting in her gut.

"You're a little quick to trust, aren't you?" Ashley sounded more entertained than anything. "Here we were thinking you might be a menace."

"What? Why would you think I am a menace?" Liara stared at Ashley in honest shock.

"Your mother," Nicole supplied. She waited to see if this elicited a reaction from the doctor, but she only seemed even more confused. "Do you keep in touch?"

"Not for the past five years or so, no," Liara said, softly. The asari might be long-lived, but that didn't change the fact that five years was a long time not to speak to your mother. Nicole believed her. Everything she had been trained to do told her to distrust the girl until she had ruled out any possibility of her being connected to Saren, but somehow she could not bring herself to do it.

"We have reason to believe she's working with the geth, as well as a traitorous Spectre named Saren. That's why we're here. We just didn't expect the geth to have already shown up." She added, somehow sounding sincere, "I'm sorry. This must be a shock"

"No—I mean yes! I knew she was pursuing a relationship with Saren, but the _geth_…." Liara looked lost in her thoughts. Liara looked desperate when she asked, "You're sure?"

"We can talk about that later. For now, let's focus on getting you out of there."

"O-of course. Right. I'm afraid I don't have any idea how you can get through to this side of the curtain—the barrier is unlike anything I've ever seen, and even Karn's warp fields did nothing to it."

"Oh, I think I have an idea."

"You know," Wrex said at last, "That smile of yours is starting to scare the shit out of me, Shepard."

XXX

Shepard's revelation about Liara's mother came as a thundering shock. All this time she had been praying, hoping that her mother and her powerful Spectre friend would come save her. She'd been imagining the scene in the past few hours. Saren and Benezia would dispatch the geth and the mercenary brute with their biotics, and Benezia would free Liara, telling her how wrong she had been to just abandon her Little Wing.

That was a child's dream. She'd known it even then, but it hadn't seemed so impossible. Now a human woman was telling her that her mother, the woman who had raised her back in their estate on Thessia, who had comforted her when she'd cried, who had nurtured her dreams of becoming an archaeologist … was apparently trying to kill her. Surely that was impossible. Liara had tried to see Saren as Benezia insisted he be seen, as a brave and commanding hero, but in reality the Spectre had always terrified her. Somehow, Nicole Shepard did not scare her quite as much, even if her face was as impressively battle-scarred as Saren's was.

_Don't be a fool_, Liara chided herself. _She's a Spectre, just like Saren. She might even be lying to you._

Why? Liara didn't know why. It was so overwhelming, so patently _wrong_ that she didn't know how to think. She tried to take a breath. She needed to calm herself, to approach this as rationally as she would a research problem. The one thing she knew for certain was that Karn and an entourage of geth were trying to kidnap her—kidnap her, but not necessarily kill her. She also knew that they had been willing to take her by force.

Now there was a human Spectre telling her, suddenly, that Saren and Benezia were _involved_ with the geth? Why would she say such a thing?!

But, then again, why would she lie? The chance that the situation with Karn was a ruse designed to ingratiate Liara to this Nicole Shepard was either utterly delusional or so brilliant as to give Liara no possible recourse, anyhow. Between Karn and the Spectre, only the Spectre offered any hope at safety. She had no choice but to trust her.

_But if that's true…. _She tried not to think of the implications.

When the human had taken off her helmet, Liara had been stunned. She had seen humans before, although not many, but none of the ones she had seen were nearly as … _striking_. The red hair, red as crackling flame, and eyes greener than Liara would have thought possible. Everything about her was intense, almost overwhelming, but she had appeared to be in perfect control. Liara could well believe that the volcano wouldn't erupt until Nicole Shepard was good and ready for it to do so.

She shuddered and tried not to scream as the entire cave shook from the sound of an explosion. Her ears rang and she wondered, with mounting dread, if the volcano was finally making good on its long-standing promise to erupt. She closed her eyes and whispered a prayer to a goddess she didn't believe in, but thankfully there was nothing else.

Footsteps echoed behind her. Liara tried to turn to see, but of course she couldn't.

"Hello! Commander Shepard, is that you?"

"Hang on." When the Spectre spoke, her voice sounded unusually unfiltered—some modification to her translator? There was hardly any delay and no tonal shifting. She sounded unusually curt, but it actually sounded like it was her own curtness, and not the translator's. Lost in her thoughts, Liara fell to the ground, freed of the field. She turned to look at Shepard, who held a pistol in one hand with the lazy lethality of a born predator. The helmet was back on. Liara was surprised to realize that she was disappointed.

"Thank you!" Liara said, and she meant it. She got to her feet and dusted herself off a little. Next to all the soldiers in their armour, Liara felt a little silly in her labcoat. "How did you—"

"Mining laser. Blew out the chamber at the other end of the Prothean construct," Nicole explained. "Are you injured?"

"No, I'm fine," Liara said breathlessly. It felt _good_ to be able to move again. She stretched out her limbs and shook out her shoulders. She was immediately mortified when she realized the Spectre was staring at her. Her mouth opened but she couldn't manage to get anything out. She closed it before she looked like a gaping fish.

"Let's get out of here. Plenty of time for aerobics aboard the _Normandy_," Shepard said. It took Liara a while to realize she was joking. She was saved the embarrassment when another shockwave reverberated through the floor, knocking Liara back on her ass. All the soldiers crouched, combat ready, and Liara felt even _more _like a fool.

"What was that?' The other human demanded.

"The mining laser must have agitated the volcano," Liara said faintly. It took a fraction of a second for her words to take effect.

"Move!"

They all ran, and to her surprise Nicole pulled her to her feet and dragged her along, running towards the Prothean elevator.

"Doctor, can you work this thing?"

"Well, yes, I mean—maybe!"

XXX

"Do it!" Nicole shoved her into the controls and drew her pistol. Liara tapped a command into the controls, and then prayed. The elevator was used to carry the mining laser down, so if it could manage that thing, it _should _have been able to carry them. That thought didn't do much to reassure her that the tens of thousands of years old elevator would work. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened.

Then, blessedly, it creaked into motion, taking them ponderously towards the surface. Every few seconds, the entire world quaked around them, once with such force that it nearly sent Nicole to her knees. Liara was sent flying from the console, and Nicole reached out to catch her by one arm. The Doctor murmured her thanks and went back to the Prothean controls. When the elevator finally ground to a halt, they were presented with a large, open room leading to a hallway.

Someone was waiting for them. The "someones" in question were, in fact, a single krogan and five geth, standing behind him as patient as only machines could be. They were all armed.

"So you worked your way outta that field," Karn sneered. "Good of you. Saves me the trouble."

"You will not have her," Nicole said, with cold menace. The krogan snorted.

"Who's gonna stop me? My employer specified that the girl was to be brought in alive, but she didn't specify she had to be undamaged." He wasn't bothering to wear a helmet, so Nicole could see the full bore of his small-eyed sneer. He was of a size with Wrex, and the shotgun he carried was twice as large as normal. That didn't really prove anything, though. "Mommy wants to see you _real_ bad, girl."

"My mother," Liara whispered faintly. She sounded like she was somewhere else. Nicole stepped in front of her, pistol raised. Wrex and Ashley had their weapons ready as well, levelled at the krogan.

"This place is about to blow. Are you _really_ being paid enough to get buried in lava?"

"I don't know. Are you?"

Nicole answered by shooting him three times in rapid succession. The first two bullets crackled against his kinetic barrier, but the third exploded into his throat in a gush of blood, and Nicole knew she had a 1.35 second window before the bloodrage took over and he just started ignoring his wounds. She dialled her gun from shield disruptors to incendiaries and shot again, putting a bullet in his eye in a fraction of a second. He didn't react quickly enough to scream, and only gurgled painfully as he died, his face melted as though in slow motion.

For a moment, the geth didn't react, so Ashley and Wrex opened fire, immediately destroying two of them. Nicole pegged one of the other geth in the chest, but not before another opened fire with his bizarre rifle. Nicole leapt out of the way, only to find another geth had perfectly predicted her movement. She tensed up for the coming wound, but to her amazement the bullets bounced harmlessly away. The purplish haze of a biotic barrier surrounded her skin, humming in the air. The geth took a moment to adjust, which gave Wrex the opportunity to barrel forward and knock it over with brute force. Nicole and Ashley, safe behind barriers, destroyed the other two geth with ease. They'd picked a fight with no cover, which was suicide—but geth didn't think that way.

"Barriers always were a specialty of mine," Liara said weakly, from behind them. Nicole turned to see the asari was smiling faintly, as though she didn't quite believe what she'd done.

"Well, you probably just saved our lives, or kept me from adding another scar to my collection," Nicole said wryly. The effect was muted somewhat when another shake rocked the elevator and sent the asari right back to the ground. Nicole pulled her up and started running, breaking ahead of Ashley and Wrex. She turned behind to see that the asari wasn't running; she was floating, propelling herself with biotic energy, her arms spread behind her like an angelic figurehead on an ancient seafaring ship. Nicole was impressed.

She just hoped she wasn't going to be buried on Therum before she had a chance to say so.

XXX

In the end, they almost hadn't made it. They'd gotten back to the surface and hopped aboard the Mako, only to be picked up by the _Normandy _as the lava flows nearly consumed the rock they'd been standing on. Joker complained loudly over the comms about frying the _Normandy's_hull, and Nicole had to laugh. Meanwhile, Liara was mourning the loss of the Prothean ruins, though Nicole suspected it was mostly to distract herself. When Nicole's life had evaporated she had just ceased to function, tried to pretend that she didn't exist; but she had only been ten years old. Liara had a good ninety years to develop coping strategies, and she had spent most of those years as an archaeologist.

"Those were some of the best-preserved Prothean ruins ever _found_," Liara moaned, burying her head in her hands. "We—I—think there is actually a complete data archive down there! Or rather, there was." She sounded abysmally disappointed. She coughed a little and failed to hide it.

"Well, Doctor, I may have a story to tell you about the Protheans," Nicole promised. "_After_ you've received medical attention." This only caused Liara to blush—again.

"I—thank you, but I am fine."

"No, you're not. You were using a lot of biotics to project that field and get out of there as fast as you did, and you didn't have a helmet or a hardsuit to protect you from the temperature. You were breathing in dust, smoke, and I don't know what else."

"I am really—quite all right," Liara insisted, which would have been more convincing if she hadn't coughed half way through. Nicole's expression was frighteningly even as she said,

"If you think that volcano was rough, you don't want to find out what Dr. Chakwas will do to me if I don't get you to the med bay." That managed to put a smile on Liara's face, at least. "In the interest of _my_ health, at least, go check in. Ashley will show you the way."

Ashley had taken off her helmet, and smiled genially at Liara, though Nicole suspected her feelings about taking another alien of suspect origin onboard were more complicated than her smile suggested. At least she had enough professionalism to hide it. She left with Liara, and Wrex left to do whatever it was krogans did when they weren't shooting something. Alone, Nicole sat on the floor against the Mako and took off her helmet. Her hair was slicked back with sweat, and she wiped it out of her face. She took a long, calming breath, and closed her eyes.

_We could've died. _They_ could have died._ Wrex, Ashley, they had both trusted her, and Nicole had very nearly buried them in molten rock. Nicole had known the mission would be risky the moment she saw the volcanic surface, but she hadn't expected to wind up running out of a slumbering volcano. A slumbering _Prothean_ volcano. She tried not to think of Akuze, and oddly felt the thought passing. It wasn't Akuze that came back to her now, but something else.

The pain that had sparked into life on Therum had returned. Images flashed in her mind. An alien clutched a child on a faraway planet with a burning sky. A giant, dark purple hand reached through clouds to grasp at a helpless world below. A young girl with a shock of red hair gave herself to a cult of murderers. The pain mounted, and rose to such an unbearable peak that a strangled grunt of pain escaped Nicole's clenched teeth. Her brother, absent-mindedly, asked her to hand him a medical pad. As he turned to take it from her his eyes and face melted away, until nothing was left, and she was alone.

The lining of her hardsuit was sticky with sweat. The lights in the docking bay suddenly seemed blinding, and though they were shut, her eyes hurt.

On her eighth birthday, her brother had bought her a building set: the Prothean ruins on Mars. He had gone out in their back yard the night before and buried the set in the soil so that they could dig it out. Nicole had forgotten how happy she'd been that day. Her brother took the day off and dug it out with her, using instruments he assured her were genuine; they had probably cost twice what the model set had. Halfway through, a sudden rain had washed the rest of the soil away and revealed the entire set. He had only laughed and hugged her in the rain. He opened his mouth to say something to her.

_"Reaper."_

_ "Ryan?" She looked up at him, afraid. The screeching roar of metal sliding against itself erupted from his mouth._

Nicole banged her head back against the Mako. The pain rang viciously through her skull, but at least the memory stopped. Not for the first time in her life, something was in her head against her will. She didn't plan on letting that ever happen again. Her eyes fluttered closed, which she knew she shouldn't let happen. Never sleep after an injury to the back of a head; a concussion could kill you just as easily as a gunshot. That was basic Alliance protocol.

Basic Alliance marines, though, hadn't had their bones artificially reinforced by synthetic nanotech. When Chakwas had found _that _out in one of her exams, she hadn't believed it. The technology wasn't supposed to exist. Now, it let her sleep, so she closed her eyes and waited for sleep to take her, praying she would not dream. Just a few hours of oblivion was all she asked for.

The _knock, pause, knock_ sound of uneven footsteps shook her awake. Her eyes snapped open and she looked up to see the _Normandy's_ pilot limping towards her on crutches. His trademark baseball cap and perfectly cheerless grin accompanied him the same way Nicole's pistol did. Slowly, and very carefully, he sat down next to Nicole.

"Don't mean any disrespect, Commander, but I'd send Helen into hysterics if I stood still for any longer than ten seconds." Nicole inclined her head slightly in response. "Uh, everything kosher on planet Shepard?"

"Never better."

"You scream in pain just to amuse yourself, then?"

The ship's cameras. _Damn_. She'd forgotten them. She never forgot anything.

"Just a headache. It's passed."

"Commander, I don't mean to step on toes or anything—"

"My toes can handle some stepping on." Nicole winced once she'd realized what she'd said. It was too late to take it back now, and luckily Joker didn't look offended. More amused than anything else.

"They can handle being stepped on by _my_ toes, at least. Look, Commander, you should take care of yourself. I know it sucks, but ..." Joker trailed off. He was looking down the corridor leading out of the docking bay. No one was there but them. "No one else saw you down here, don't worry. I just flick through the ship's cameras a lot. You know, when I'm not running marathons."

"Why do they call you 'Joker'?" Nicole suddenly asked. Joker chuckled.

"I didn't smile much at the Academy. I was mostly focused on proving that I was the best damn pilot out there. And I did. Every damn day I practiced, in sims, reading books, taking tests, whatever. So my instructor, who was _really_ funny, called me Joker. Name stuck. I can see you didn't have that problem."

"Someone called me Scarface, once," Nicole said. Joker whistled long and low.

"I'm guessing that didn't go over well."

"I introduced him to my little friend," Nicole said dryly. Joker chuckled darkly, and Nicole grinned. "Actually, I just ignored him. I didn't stick to one group for very long, so I guess the nicknames didn't have time to stick." Nicole was the youngest N7 marine on record; she'd spent a lot of time rising in the ranks, barely getting used to one unit before shipping out to a new one. She'd liked it that way.

"I never had that pleasure. The Flight Academy was like a miniature cult, I'm tellin' you." Joker shuddered. "I still get Christmas cards."

Nicole didn't know what to say to that, and fell into silence. Joker didn't seem to mind, but Nicole could detect a faint discomfort. She tried to search for something to say and found that the words didn't come. What could she say? That whenever anyone mentioned Christmas she couldn't help but remember that "like a kid on Christmas" had been among Vargas' last words not spoken in horror? She wished she could be as smooth and casual as someone like Joker was. She wished she could just crack a joke, smile, and mean it.

"Y'know, one of my old commanders made it a routine to bring the officers around for a game of poker after a mission," Nicole said, at last. "Think I might revive the tradition."

"This isn't a scam to cheat your crew out of their hard-earned credits, is it?" Joker's grin had some mirth in it. "I'm gonna take a _wild_ guess and say that you've got a pretty good poker face, huh."

Nicole looked at him with an utterly expressionless expression and said,

"Now where would you get that idea."

Joker actually laughed, genuinely laughed, a sound that Nicole realized was nearly as rare from him as it was from her. Somewhere deep inside herself she was glad.

"So. Forgiven me yet for risking your ship?"

"Risking? _Risking_? _Risking_ is what we do when we jump a relay when we don't double check the FTL drive, that's _risking_. What we did down there involved scraping our ass off with a volcano. The _Normandy_ deserves better than that, Shepard." Joker sounded very serious. Nicole, finally, got to her feet. She needed to hit the showers, at least, and file a mission report. She extended a hand to Joker, and to her relief, he took it.

"Let's keep her safe then."

"Damn straight." Joker leaned onto his clutches and grinned sardonically. "Fear my wrath, Commander Shepard."

"You can call me Nicole."

"Then I'm Jeff. Nice to meetcha."


	12. Chapter 12

The apartment was a dirty little thing, but comfortable in its way. On the Omega mining station dug into an asteroid, most apartments were hovels carved into the sides of forgotten hallways. Tobias was sitting in the apartment's sole chair, and staring at the only other piece of furniture: a bed. On it a young girl was lying, shivering and barely conscious. She hadn't yet acknowledged him.

"Cozy," Tobias growled conversationally. No response. The girl kept shivering. He examined her with some interest; she had a couple minor surgeries, cleaning her teeth, changing her eye color, and restoring her hair. Her head was now adorned by a messy mop of bright blonde hair. That was clever; she'd been born with curly black hair. Tobias pulled a wristwatch out of the black overcoat he was wearing, to hide his exoskeleton. Among other things, the wristwatch had a timepiece. "Your debtors are late," Tobias told the girl, his raspy voice oddly pleasant. Still nothing.

He waited for a while. The apartment was dim, grey, lightly furnished. No doubt she'd spent what little money she'd earned on the surgery and the apartment itself. Tobias wondered how she'd paid for it. Perhaps a little light merc or bounty hunting work. She'd certainly been capable of that, before the withdrawal really hit. He was surprised she'd lasted this long.

Before long, a krogan came to the door, and from his startled, angry growl, he hadn't expected Tobias. Tobias calmly reached into his jacket and pulled out the best weapon of all: a credit chit. He handed it to the krogan, explained he was paying his friend's debts, and watched the man walk away, satisfied.

Gabreau would have been outraged if he knew that Tobias thought of krogan males as "men," or krogan females as "women." He would have been outraged to know that Tobias bothered distinguishing between aliens for reasons other than their timely assassination. But Gabreau, genius that he was, was a dinosaur. Tobias took his seat and strapped the watch to the young girl's wrist, and pressed a button on the side. A small, microbial needle shot from the base of the watch and into her skin.

"This is an improved version. The side-effects are still there, of course—but not as strong." He chatted conversationally as he administered a number of drugs more traditionally, with needles he produced from the many pockets of his coat. Slowly the girl revived, and looked upon him with fear. Tobias smiled pleasantly. "No need to be afraid. I'm supposed to be killing you."

"You're not." It was half a question.

"I'm not," Tobias agreed.

"Why didn't you just kill the krogan?"

"Why am I not just killing you?" Tobias asked, before growing exasperated. He would have sounded terribly refined, if not for the harsh growl of his voice. It gave a cutting undercurrent to his politeness. "Killing is messy, brutal, and irreversible. There's no need to kill a potential asset … or to attract attention to oneself. Unless necessary."

"What do you want?" The girl demanded. Her voice was higher, sweeter than Tobias would have expected. He doubted she'd had the money for surgery sophisticated enough to modify her vocal chords.

"The surgery was smart," Tobias said instead, "But you'll need more. Shepard is the best, probably better than I am at a lot of things. You can't risk her catching you."

"What do you _want_?" The girl insisted. Her eyes were jittery, barely focused. The revival drugs had their side effects, too. Tobias sighed.

"That device clamped to your wrist contains a six month supply of the Stigma. You don't need to worry, I can't deactivate it. But I wouldn't recommend tampering with it." He smiled, showing perfectly white teeth. "I also wouldn't recommend allowing that supply to wear out. As reduced as the side-effects may be, the withdrawal is still as unpleasant as you've been discovering."

"What was your number?" The girl pulled herself to a sitting position, now, and looked him in the eye.

"Nine. You were Ten, correct?"

"Yes."

"My name is Tobias." He extended a hand, and she took it.

"I don't remember mine."

"Ten it is, then. You recognized Shepard at Noveria, while you were undercover." The prosthetics required to hide the evidence of the drugs she'd been on had been tremendous. "Yet you didn't engage her. Why?"

"I couldn't afford to break cover," she said honestly. "And I knew I couldn't kill her if I did. Thirteen was an idiot for trying to engage her, just because he had a gun. You and Shepard got all of Gabreau's best stuff," she added bitterly.

"Trust me," Tobias said dryly, with a voice like a chainsaw, "It was not an enviable experience." Ten crossed her arms. With her hair and teeth restored, she was almost pretty. Not that Tobias was a measure of any such thing. He knew Shepard was gay too; had Gabreau perhaps targeted them in part for that reason, or was it mere happenstance? Tobias supposed he would never know.

"None of us had it easy," Ten insisted. "What do you want?"

"To not have to kill you. If you could assist me in this endeavour, I would be most grateful." Tobias knew that his smile was deadlier than any weapon, and he used it to threaten as much as he used his biotics for combat. "How'd you get away from Noveria without Gabreau noticing?"

"That was easy. Just booked passage on a freighter. I still had the tech to manufacture some more prosthetics." Tobias knew that Ten specialized in making and using her own disguises. That was why she'd been deployed to Noveria publically, while the other kid had been hidden in the Sublab. "That gave out so I got some surgery here. Just about ran out of credits, though."

She kept looking at the watch on her wrist. It was coded to deliver the Stigma, the drug she and Thirteen had been addicted to, in slow, careful increments. There was no way to artificially increase the dosage.

"I can offer you a supply of the drug that will last you the rest of your days," Tobias said simply. The effect of his words spoke magnitudes. Where before Ten had been suspicious and resentful, now she was alert, attentive, and desperate. She'd give anything to be free, Tobias could see that plain on her face. "I take it you are interested?"

"Yes."

"Good." Tobias smiled again. "You'll be tracking down and capturing Nicole Shepard."

"Why? _How?_"

"The 'why' is simple." Tobias shrugged. "We need what's inside her head. She recently got in touch with a Prothean beacon, and Gabreau doesn't feel that knowledge will be used optimally by the Alliance or the Council. The 'how' is up to you. Gabreau doesn't believe you're equal to the task, but I believe that when someone _truly_ wants something, they can do the impossible. Prove my optimistic theory right, and you get to live with enough Stigma to manage your symptoms for a good long time. Prove me wrong, and you will find yourself the latest addition to a long series of unfortunates found on the end of Nicole's sniper rifle."

"So you need her alive?"

"Alive," Tobias said, "But not kicking." He got to his feet and went to the door. "She'll be on Feros. You'll find I've left a credit chit containing all you'll need on the desk there."

"How do you know where she'll be?"

"The same way I knew you would agree to this." Tobias smiled for the last time, to himself. "We all have our compulsions."

XXX

"How is she?"

"She's fine, as far as I can tell," Chakwas explained. She was as professional and composed as her orderly med bay was. In the room connecting to hers, Liara had set up a research terminal. That, at least, had prompted Nicole to smile. Chakwas was examining her with a small scanner. "A little exhaustion, and minor smoke and dust inhalation, nothing we couldn't treat. You look like you're fine, too."

Nicole wasn't sure that she was. Even though she trusted Chakwas, she didn't want to voice her vague suspicions that the Beacon had messed something up in her head; what could Chakwas do about it, anyway? Prothean technology was 50,000 years old and twice as advanced. There was no need to worry her over Nicole's own mental health. The woman had enough on her plate as the sole doctor to an entire ship's crew.

"Good. I'd like to speak with her."

"Of course. But—Nicole?" Nicole looked at Chakwas, a little surprised. Chakwas smiled apologetically and said, "Go easy on her. She's not military, after all."

_Not military_,_ but no civilian, either_, Nicole thought, thinking of the asari's biotics. Instead, she said,

"Hey." She gave her very best cocksure grin. "It's me."

"Never will I forgive Anderson for watching those ancient movies with you," Chakwas moaned, but Nicole only smiled, a little more honestly this time. Chakwas was among those who held the fervent opinion that pre-contact sci fi was, frankly, embarrassing. Nicole was not. In her opinion, _Star Wars_ was a classic.

She knocked on the door to the asari's room, and received a fairly cheerful,

"Come in!" When Nicole walked through the door, however, she did see the slightest—was it fear? No, not fear. Nicole had gotten pretty used to identify fear. Hesitance? Maybe. A heavy weight settled in Nicole's stomach, but she ignored it. Every time Nicole thought to herself, _I want to smile_, she immediately became incapable of doing so.

"How are you settling in?" Nicole asked. Liara looked for a moment like she was going to get up, but she stayed sitting at her terminal.

"Okay. Well, as okay as can be expected. It's still a lot to take in."

"That was quite the show you put on back on Therum," Nicole said by way of response. Liara looked surprised and sort of waved her hands in front of her face.

"Oh, not really! It was just-"

"Standard asari practice is to train students in basic biotics in specialized schools, but most grown asari women can barely deflect a vigorously thrown rock." Nicole raised an eyebrow, but her stern features softened a little. "You can't be much older than a hundred. Don't sell yourself short. You are the reason Chakwas is not presently removing geth bullet fragments from my abdomen."

"Oh, um. Thank you." Liara, despite obvious attempts to hide it, was blushing furiously. Nicole managed a small smile, trying to set the other woman at ease. "My mother rather insisted I received more than ordinary training."

"It sounds like she cares very much for you," Nicole said simply. A frantic smile spasmed onto Liara's face, but it was more out of gratitude than anything else.

"I think so. But she's a very important woman. These past years she's been very busy, and I've been busy with myself. She tended to look to the future, whereas I was happier staying stuck in the past," Liara said, with more than a touch of regret.

"For someone stuck in the past, you had some pretty wild theories," Nicole offered, then explained: "I've read your work. You sure didn't sound like some stuffy traditionalist stuck in the past then. You're passionate about the Protheans, and I don't blame you. They're a fascinating species."

"Yes, well, some people do not see my work as relevant," Liara admitted.

"The extinction of the creators of the Citadel seems very relevant to me," Nicole said. She genuinely believed it, apart from what she knew now about the Reapers.

"Well, I guess you're familiar with my theory! I mean, what, we believe _an entire_ galactic civilization just up and vanished without a single colony remaining?"

"I don't believe that, either. We share a mutual interest in the Protheans," Nicole said. She took a breath, then plowed ahead. "I recently had the pleasure of coming into contact with a Prothean Beacon that warned of a massive, galaxy-wide attack on the Protheans by a race of beings called the Reapers. Saren is working with them, and your mother seems to be, as well."

"What do you mean, you came into contact with it?"

"It snared me in green light and dumped a dozen nightmares in my brain." Nicole tapped the side of her head for reference. "They were very convincing, and I'm very sure they aren't my own nightmares. Whatever it is, we do know that Saren is working with the geth, he's murdered a Spectre, and he led the attack on Eden Prime."

"You—you came in contact with a Prothean Beacon? It actually downloaded information directly into your brain? But—this is incredible! It's amazing you were able to understand it at all!"

"I wouldn't exactly call the visions I received the picture of clarity," Nicole said dryly. Liara was still staring at her, somewhat bug-eyed in a mixture of alarm and excitement.

"Those Beacons were designed to communicate to a race over 50,000 years old, Commander Shepard, it's a miracle the Beacon did not kill you. It's a miracle you're not in a coma!"

"Unfortunately, that's where our miracles run dry. There wasn't anything in that Beacon about rogue Spectre rendezvous points, so we're just about out of leads," Nicole said wryly. To her surprise, Liara chuckled.

"No, somehow I think the Protheans might have missed that."

_She actually laughed at one of my jokes. I'll be damned._

"We were sort of hoping you might know something. Anything at all?"

"Only that rumours of these 'Reapers' show up in a dozen different, completely unconnected alien cultures. I'm afraid that if my mother is in league with Saren, I know nothing about it." Nicole's first thought was that she believed her. She said it so honestly. But Nicole's second thought was that if she was lying, the information would be easy to extract. Immediately she felt a roiling wave of guilt in her gut, and looked abruptly away from Liara to compose herself. "I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"No, it's nothing. It's not your fault," Nicole said automatically, her voice rigid and fierce. That was how she sounded when she didn't have time to think.

"Well—there is one thing we could try. I—you know about the asari ability to meld minds, yes?"

"Yes, I do," Nicole said, not wanting to reveal how much of her childhood she'd spent studying asari under the pretext of learning alien languages so that she would better be able to kill them.

"Of course you do," Liara said, more to herself than anything else, Nicole thought. "Well, we could try that. I'm no expert and I certainly haven't spent a lot of time practicing, but my knowledge of the Protheans might be helpful."

Nicole froze, and her face became an unfeeling mask. She was acutely aware of her surroundings; a small, closed-in room with a computer terminal alongside one wall and a storage locker at the far end. The computer terminal was unguarded electronically and vulnerable to simple hacking. The young asari in front of her possessed considerable biotic skill; to disable, first drive fourth and fifth ribs into the left lung, strike at the back of the neck, and then gouge eyes. Execute via a slitting of the jugular vein running behind the tentacles at rear of head.

The clarity of the information stunned her. Where had that come from? Liara was no threat to her, had certainly said nothing to trigger such a response. But the thought of the asari getting into Nicole's head was more than she could bear. A part of her wanted to trust the asari, it was true; but everything else in her was unable to.

"I'm sorry," Nicole said, trying not to sound unkind, "But I'm not sure that's the best idea. Excuse me."

Abruptly, Nicole turned about and left. The moment she did, she wished she hadn't. But somehow she couldn't bear to have to face Liara again.

XXX

_Why did I say such a stupid thing?_ Liara collapsed into her chair and buried her face in her hands. She was an _idiot_. Commander Shepard just stood there, so … _indomitable_, and Liara had done nothing but babble at the woman about the details of her personal life.

She knew nothing about the humans, but Nicole Shepard seemed to be a walking library of information on asari, Protheans, and the Goddess knew what else. She felt like an utter fool. Suggesting to meld with someone who was an almost total stranger? It had seemed a brilliant idea at the time, but now she realized how forward she had sounded. No wonder Shepard had left. Liara got the distinct impression that woman didn't do much on impulse.

_And I asked her to meld with me! Why did I do that? What was I thinking? _Liara was absolutely mortified. She'd been so caught up with the talk of Protheans—so enthralled at the idea of actually seeing the data from a Beacon—that she had failed to remember that she was asking a near-total stranger to share her brain. What had compelled her to _do_ such a thing? She hadn't melded with anyone in years!

It was tempting to wallow in her misery. She certainly _felt_ like doing so. But she knew that she could not. Shepard and her crew had saved Liara's life; the least Liara could do was figure out some way to repay them. She just wished she had more to go on. Sure, she was a Prothean expert, but that didn't mean she could hear the words "beacon" and "your mother's involved" and come to a conclusion. She needed to approach this rationally, and assess the data.

She had made an utter fool of herself once, and she did not intend to do so again. Still getting used to the unfamiliar human keyboard, she turned to the terminal she had been provided with and searched Alliance Service histories. She scrolled down until she found the profile of one N7 operative: Nicole Shepard. Liara was surprised that Shepard hadn't glared a hole into the camera that had taken her official photo. Unsurprisingly, most of the information was classified.

_Well,_ Liara thought, _I'm either a wallowing little child, or an archaeologist holding three doctoral degrees. Let's get to it._


	13. Chapter 13

_It is an observed fact that ninety percent of test subjects turn wild within a timespan no less than one month and no more than two years. It is the final defense mechanism in the brain, to reject a reality that has become too harsh for the mind. Those who survive—the remaining ten percent—are those capable of facing any reality. It is those whom we shape. – from the research notes of Dr. Henry Gabreau_

XXX

"So how're you handling being on a human ship?"

"Huh?" Garrus looked surprised by the question. He'd clearly been enthralled by whatever it was he was doing, something with the controls of the Mako. "Uh, fine, I guess. Any, uh—" Garrus stuck his head out of the driver's seat window of the Mako. "—Any reason?"

Nicole opened up the passenger's side door and pulled herself up into the seat. She shot Garrus one of her stone-cold stares and said,

"Well, there's an alien in my combat jeep, for starters."

They fell into a very uneasy silence. It lasted for ten seconds before one of Nicole's eyebrows raised just a hair, and he somehow intuited she was joking.

"Relax, Vakarian. I invited you here. Can't recall giving you permission to bunk in the combat jeep, but I'll excuse it." She almost smiled. "You like to tinker?"

"A little," Vakarian admitted, sounding somewhat guarded. "Helps me think sometimes, you know?"

"You have no idea."

Vakarian shrugged as if to say "You're right" and went back to the Mako's control panel.

"I can't believe you humans drive this thing. The steering vectors are as stable as a _riktos_ in heat."

"There's an image." Nicole chuckled. Garrus looked sideways at her.

"You know what a _riktos_ is?"

"I'm speaking your language, aren't I?"

"Spirits, you—you don't use a translator, do you?" Garrus slapped his hand to his forehead. "How did I not notice?"

"Most people don't," Nicole said, not unkindly. "It's kind of a useless skill in an age of instant translation."

"My father would probably have said something like 'there's no such thing as a useless skill.'" When Garrus impersonated his father, he screwed up his face and adopted an accent which in translation to human speech would best be described as "hoighty-toighty." He grinned. "Neat party trick, at least."

"Speaking of parties, I wanted to let you know. You're coming with me on the next mission." Garrus' mandibles turned inward a bit and his eyes widened slightly, a turian expression that meant "surprise."

"Uh, thanks Commander. Hope we'll work out well."

"You and I both specialize in sniping, assault, and tech hacking, and against geth those are useful skills," Nicole explained.

"Right. What is the next mission, anyway?"

"No idea. I believe in being prepared. Plus I want to get your feet wet. See how turians swim."

"Not a pretty picture," Garrus said, with a laugh.

"Well, let's settle on finding out how Garrus Vakarian swims. See what kind of picture that is."

"Hopefully I'll measure up. I pissed a lot of people off, coming here with you."

"People like who?" Nicole asked.

"My dad. He's pretty old-school C-Sec. Everything done according to protocol, proper procedure … that sort of thing. Following one Spectre around the galaxy to chase down another that's gone rogue isn't really his idea of an honest living."

"But it is yours," Nicole supplied. Garrus shrugged and said, a little hopelessly,

"I don't know. But it feels right. Saren should answer for what he's done. Criminals should. Procedure, protocol … those things can get in the way of justice."

"I'm not a huge fan myself," without thinking, Nicole had raised a hand to the scar on her left cheek. "Sometimes procedures exist for a reason, though. To protect people who can't protect themselves."

"And what about when the procedure fails those people?"

Nicole looked at him very seriously. Or perhaps she just looked at him. It was frequently hard to tell which.

"That is why we have people like me."

They sat in the Mako for a while, as Garrus accessed the jeep's computer. He didn't know what to say.

"There was a reason I came up here. Poker game. It's a human card game but the rules are easy. I'd like to invite you."

"Uh, sure. Anyone else coming?"

"Me, Alenko, Williams, and Joker. Wrex." Nicole chuckled. "Wrex. There's a charmer. Tali, and if I can convince her, T'Soni. You can learn a lot about someone over a game of poker."

"What's it involve?"

"Cards, lying, money—though we're not betting anything real. Not the first time out, at least. Good human fun," Nicole said dryly.

"All right," Garrus said. Nicole gave a sort of half salute and slipped out of the Mako as quickly as she'd come in. Garrus leaned back in the driver's seat. "All right."

XXX

It turned out that it was pretty hard to find information about Nicole Shepard. Her public military record was studded with more awards and merits for achievement than Liara could count, but the details were always scant, and there was almost no information about Shepard's life before joining the military. Liara knew enough about information management to guess that such a thing was not natural—Ashley Williams' name, for example, showed up a dozen times in local newspaper stories (field and track achievements), and Kaidan Alenko was listed publically as an attendee of a biotic training school. But nothing for Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre and as far as Liara was concerned, the most terrifyingly efficient soldier she had ever seen. Shepard had shot Karn before he could even _react_, had done so with such brutal efficiency that the fight had been over before it started.

Liara left the quarters she'd been given and walked through the med bay, where she saw Chakwas brooding over her work. Liara immediately felt like an idiot. She knew from the way that they spoke to one another that Chakwas and Shepard were acquainted—why hadn't she just asked Chakwas directly?

_Probably because that wouldn't occur to someone who's spent years in dig sites_, Liara admitted.

"Hello, Liara. Finally going to step out and get some fresh air?" Chakwas asked. Liara was baffled.

"Fresh … air? But, ma'am, we are on a spaceship—"

"Nothing. Never mind." But Chakwas was chuckling. "An old English expression, I daresay it doesn't make much sense through the translator. Sometimes I wish I spoke as many languages as our Commander."

"She's multilingual?" Liara asked innocently. Chakwas raised an eyebrow.

"Well, that's technically accurate. As far as I know she speaks over forty languages, most of them alien. She's the most gifted polyglot I've ever met, among her other talents. She doesn't even turn her translator on, just keeps it active in case she runs into some country bumpkin who only speaks some ass-backwards variant of colonial turian. That or an elcor."

"I had no idea. I just thought she was using a translator," Liara said, partially out of sheer embarrassment. Shepard had been speaking to her in _Siin_ the entire time?

"Most people do. Well, like I said, we can't all be Commander Shepard. Is there something you needed, or are you just trying to think of an excuse to get me to shut up so you can go about your day?" Liara was mortified, but Chakwas was smiling genially, and after a moment she realized the woman was joking.

"Well, actually—you know Shepard, don't you?"

"Better than most," Chakwas said carefully. "I've known her for a long time. Since she joined the academy."

"Well, it's just—I'm afraid I may have misspoken and offended her, during our last conversation, and I was hoping to not make a fool of myself again."

"I doubt you did any lasting damage," Chakwas said gently. "Nicole's not quite as fearsome as she seems. Even if you did say something wrong, I'm sure she understands."

"Do you know where she is right now?"

"Addressing the Council via comm-link, I think. Apparently Councillor Tevos has obtained some information which might be useful." As Chakwas finished talking, the med bay door hissed open and there, standing in the frame, was Commander Shepard, looking every bit as intense as Liara remembered. Somehow the fact that she did not wear her uniform aboard the vessel was even more intimidating—it reminded Liara of the Justicars, who had no formal wear but instead wore whatever they felt was most effective.

"My ears were burning," Nicole said to Chakwas. From the jarbled translation Liara received, she realized that she'd used some idiom in English. She hadn't been able to make out the difference before, but now she could. Nicole's natural voice had a strange accent that curled around it, making her words sound a little more short and direct, like she was reading from a page. Nicole nodded towards Liara. "Dr. T'Soni, if you don't mind, I was hoping to speak with you in your office? Unless you're busy." It was stunning, now that Liara noticed. Nicole's _Siin_ was flawless.

"No! No, not at all. Of course, Commander."

"After you, then." Liara somewhat awkwardly turned around and opened the door to her quarters, and Nicole followed.

"Yes, Commander?

"I wanted to talk to you about your suggestion, earlier." White hot shame pooled in Liara's stomach, but she tried not to look away. "It's not a bad idea. In fact, it's just about the only thing we can do that _might_ help," Nicole admitted, crossing her arms. The jacket she was wearing had long sleeves, despite the fact that space ships were kept at a reasonably warm temperature. "I reacted poorly to the suggestion. Just childishness on my part, really."

"No, Commander, I quite understand your trepidation! I don't know why I suggested such a, well, personal thing so readily, it's just—"

"This is important," Nicole completed for her. Then she smiled. "And you wouldn't mind getting a crack at the Prothean data in my brain, if I had to take a guess."

"No," Liara admitted, allowing herself to smile back. "I wouldn't. But, hopefully, I can help you understand the images, and try to translate them into something useful."

"Right. Before we do this, though, I'm going to have to clarify something." Nicole took a breath and hunched her shoulders, like she was preparing herself for something. Then she looked Liara directly in the eyes, levelling the full blast of that green-eyed stare at her. Liara almost fell backwards, though not from fear. "When we're in the meld, just stick to the Prothean data. I know how it works, I know things can be—unclear. But my memories are off limits."

"Absolutely. I would never breach your trust, Commander," Liara insisted. Nicole smiled again, that small half-smile that only seemed to happen when she didn't notice it.

"You know, I believe you. All right. Let's do this." Nicole held out one hand, and Liara realized that Nicole already knew the procedure. _Of course she does._ Liara took Nicole's hand and tried not to feel too awkward, her smooth scientist's palm brushing against Nicole's scarred fingers.

"Try to let go of your emotions," Liara advised, reciting words every asari learned from the age of five. "Let go of the world around you." From the look on Nicole's face, she didn't have much of a problem doing that. "Embrace eternity!"

"Consider it embraced," Nicole muttered, and all of the grandeur Liara had been trying to summon dissolved as she failed to fight off a snort of amusement. "Sorry. Couldn't resist."

"Next time," Liara suggested, "Resist."

"I'll be on my best behaviour, I promise," Nicole said, still with that little half-grin. Liara composed herself again and straightened her back. She shut her eyes and this time opened them as the neural link was established.

"Embrace eternity!"

Then it worked, and she knew it as instantly the mental wave of another consciousness assaulted her senses, plunging her into a darkness shared by two individuals. She sought Nicole out in the dark, searched for her consciousness, and was struck by the presence of an overwhelmingly powerful mind, a will that seemed supernatural. She choked back surprise as the mental blackness was filled with red, and she realized she'd found her. A meld was always overwhelming as it was being established, but this was something else—the kind of mind that could handle a Prothean beacon 50,000 years old.

_Liara?_ A voice in a sea of darkness, a red wave of iron-hard humanity in the vastness.

_Yes, Commander Shepard. Come with me. Recall the Protheans. Summon your memories and I will follow. _She thought it best to let Nicole take the lead, since the other woman seemed so cautious about the meld. That almost seemed absurd now. The thought that she might be able to penetrate a mind like _that_ without Nicole's express consent was as likely as Liara winning a krogan headbutt contest.

A flood of images assaulted her, sending her mind reeling. She saw a giant ship—_Saren_—floating above Eden Prime, saw geth gunning down a young soldier—_Jenkins_—saw down the barrel of a rifle—_profession_—saw a dozen geth exploding—_target_—and then, the beacon grabbed Shepard, grabbed _her_, lifted them up into the air and assaulted her mind, sending images spinning through their brains across the neural link. The images were so potent, so overwhelming, that Liara could barely handle them even with the filter of Nicole's consciousness. Liara managed to identify what Shepard couldn't have—Protheans, _real_ Protheans, and something else, something twisted, and an urgent warning, a sense of all-encompassing fear. She felt Shepard's mind there, too, understanding, discerning, adding her intellect to Liara's, trying to come to a conclusion….

Liara broke the meld and fell back against her desk, leaning on it for support. Nicole was still standing there with not a hair out of place. She could have just come from brushing her teeth. Liara tried not to get too overwhelmed by the shock of seeing an actual Prothean, alive in the Beacon's memories. There was too much to discuss.

"That was so much more clear," Shepard said, surprising her. If _that_ had been clear, she didn't want to think of what it had been the first time. "You saw it, too?"

"Yes, Commander. It's clearly a warning, of something that wiped out the Protheans. I don't think it's a forgery or a fake. I think it's the real thing. It's panicked, fragmented, but that might be all we can expect. When they did record this Beacon, it would've been during the extinction event."

"And the message has had 50,000 years to become even more tangled up. I still don't know anything, like what Saren might be after … but we're closer." Nicole looked away, like she was thinking about something. She seemed to make up her mind and then said, "I'm going to call a meeting of the senior staff. I'd like you to come as well."

"Of course."

"By the way," Nicole said, as she turned towards the door, "What would you say to joining us in combat? In the field?"

"What?" Liara blurted. Nicole raised her eyebrows and Liara hastily added, "I mean, I am certainly capable, I think, and I would like to pull my weight—"

"Good."

XXX

With everyone assembled in the conference room, Nicole was struck by the diversity of her crew. She'd asked Tali, Wrex, and Garrus to join them as well—Tali for her technical expertise, Garrus and Wrex because they were likely going to get involved shooting something or other. They were all seated in a circular pattern, so that everyone could see one another. Liara had taken a seat next to Nicole, while Ashley was sitting across from her. Kaidan was observing quietly next to her, obviously trying not to seem too intimidated by Wrex. Krogan did everything big, even just sitting down.

"After consultation with Dr. T'Soni, I've confirmed that the message from the Beacon had suffered some kind of degradation. But we also believe that it's all there, that we just need to figure out how to understand it."

"Right," Liara said, taking her cue to speak. "It's like … think of it like a cipher to decrypt a code. Commander Shepard's brain, like my own, has evolved substantially differently from a Prothean's, though we _do_ suspect that the Protheans had some hand in shaping the evolution of many species—"

"Maybe just stick to the pertinent data, Doctor," Ashley advised. Nicole didn't have to look at the asari to know that she was lightly blushing.

"Yes, my apologies. The point is that the data is all there. We just need some way to understand it."

"So how _are_ we going to understand a message made for a 50,000 year old brain?" Wrex asked, sounding curious. "I assume you have some sort of plan."

"I have received intel from the Citadel," Nicole said, by way of response, "Confirming a geth attack on Feros. What Councillor Tevos suspects—and I agree—is that Saren has accessed the probe, as I did, and that he is also looking to understand the message. If he's sent the geth in force to some obscure science colony, there has to be a reason. Feros is covered in some kind of Prothean Superstructure—there's a colony there called Zhu's Hope, building on top of what the Protheans left behind."

"So we're headed there?"

"That's the plan."

"Plenty of geth to shoot at, then," Wrex muttered, a dark smile forming on his lips. "Count me in."

"No," Nicole said simply. "I want to take a light force groundside so that the locals aren't overwhelmed. I'm taking Garrus and Liara." There were a few scandalized faces in the room—Wrex most noticeably—but Nicole ignored them. "Garrus has tech experience, which will be crucial against geth, and Liara's biotics will be useful. The geth aren't known to respond well to biotics."

"You _are_ aware I'm a biotic, right?" Wrex insisted. "A _krogan_ biotic?" Kaidan looked a little put out, too. The simple reason was that Nicole didn't want to bring Wrex to a human settlement where there were so many casualties waiting to happen. Garrus was C-Sec, and was used to fighting near civilians, whereas Nicole doubted Liara would be slinging gunfire; she mostly just wanted the security of her barriers, and her Prothean expertise on the ground. Plus, it'd give Nicole a chance to see what Garrus and Liara were made of.

"You can rest assured, Wrex, I am aware," Nicole said, at long last. He settled down. "I've already plotted a course to Feros with Pressley. We've got about ten hours before we reach the planet, so if anyone wants to grab some shut-eye, this is the time. You're all going to have to be on standby. Including you, Tali," Nicole said, startling the young quarian in her seat. "I might need to message you to get your opinion on the geth. All right everyone. See you at poker."

"Wouldn't miss it," Wrex said, somehow sounding fearsome and amused. As they all filtered out, Nicole laid a hand on Liara's shoulder. The asari turned around somewhat apprehensively.

"Yes, Commander?"

"The game's in an hour, so that should give me enough time to teach you the rules. You any good at math?" Liara stared at her.

"Math? Oh! You mean, poker is a game? I had no idea what you were talking about, at first."

"So, you want to join us? Everyone else is on board, as far as I know." Nicole found herself hoping that Liara would say yes. She found herself wishing she was better at this sort of thing—talking to people, one on one. She always felt like she was barking orders at people, or just staring in silence. After some time, Liara said,

"I would be happy to join you. Are the rules over complicated?"

"Not really. Come on, I'll show you."

XXX

"So it's a game of probability, then? The person with the best hand wins?"

"Not necessarily. You don't know the hands of the players across from you," Nicole explained. They were in Nicole's quarters, practicing with a battered old deck of cards Nicole had lying around. "So when someone makes a bet, you don't know if they have the cards to win, or if they're just bluffing—or if they only _think_ they have the winning hand."

"I see," Liara said, somewhat hopelessly. Nicole smiled again. She smiled more than Liara would've expected. It had a nice effect, made her entire face come alive. Even the scar looked better when she smiled—it curved into a dimple in her cheek in a way that was brazenly distinct.

"I wouldn't worry about bluffing when you're just starting. Just try and play your hand."

"Will you be doing that?" Liara asked. "Just playing your hand?"

"Not quite. I've got a bit more experience," Nicole said. "I can usually tell what kind of hand someone has."

"That is not very surprising," Liara murmured. "Is it just a skill you picked up with practice?" She had meant the question simply, but Nicole seemed to turn a little inward at the asking. The red-haired woman looked away from her, for a moment, like she was staring off into space. Then back again.

"More like … call it a life skill I picked up. When I was young."

"I think I understand." Nicole laughed, a low, gentle sound, and looked at her cards on the table.

"That's probably not possible. But I appreciate the sentiment."

"I did not mean to presume," Liara said, somewhat hastily.

"No, it's … I had a very unusual upbringing," Nicole said, some unspoken irony in her voice. She almost sounded amused. "You don't have to worry, Dr. T'Soni. I don't bite."

Liara looked up at Nicole and tried to find the strength in her voice. Too many times she'd felt like a child aboard the _Normandy_—like a naïve scientist who understood nothing. That wasn't her.

"If that's the case, then perhaps you could call me Liara?" Nicole looked surprised.

"Only if you call me Nicole. You can't imagine how sick I am of hearing my last name." Nicole rubbed the back of her neck, something she did, apparently, without conscious effort. Liara had never seen the Commander exhibiting some sort of tic or habit before.

"How about 'Nicky'?" Liara asked. Nicole actually looked up, grinning from behind her wild locks of red hair, her scar becoming a dimple in a smile, her green eyes glinting like emeralds, and not for the first time Liara was struck by the image of the woman. She was, Liara realized, beautiful. Utterly beautiful. "Only kidding."

"Now I'm disappointed. So, you think you have the basics down?"

"The basics? Oh, right. Poker. I think I have enough to not be completely lost. Thank you again, Commander Shepard."

"Well it'd be hardly fair of me to invite you to a game you don't know how to play," Nicole said dryly. She was still sitting in her seat, opposite Liara across the small table in Nicole's quarters.

"There was something I was curious about," Liara admitted. Nicole raised an eyebrow, and Liara realized she was probably paying too much attention to that red arch.

"Oh?"

"You have a red symbol on your primary weapon—a skull and crossbones? I didn't think that was Alliance protocol."

"It's not. Truth be told if anyone official ever gets eyes on it I'm probably going to get a talking to," Nicole admitted. "It's from an old squad I used to run with. They were killed in action."

"I'm sorry," Liara murmured. "I didn't mean to—"

"No." Shepard raised a hand. "I brought it up. You don't have anything to apologize for. Their names were Andrew Satrapi, Eve Barrows, Sean Malick, and Delilah Vargas. They were some of the best soldiers I ever knew. Wouldn't be right of me to act like they didn't exist. But I want you to know that I take the lives of my crew very seriously, Liara. You're going to be safe on Feros. I promise." Nicole looked at her very steadily, and those smiles and that almost sheepish beauty she had somehow vanished behind a cold mask.

"I believe you are quite right, Commander Shepard. Nicole." A bit of Nicole's smile came back.

"That's the spirit."

XXX

"Okay, that's it. I'm done with you maniacs." Joker threw up his hands and got out of his seat. "Move over, T'Soni."

"Pardon?" Liara looked at him in astonishment, holding her cards in her hand.

"I said move over. Take my seat next to Captain Feelings and the Fun Brigade." Joker jerked an accusatory thumb at Nicole, Wrex, and Ashley in turn. "_I_ am sitting next to Tali. We 'I-don't-kill-people-for-a-living' types have to stick together." Liara got out of her seat and scooted over to where Joker had been sitting. She politely moved his empty shot glasses out of the way as Joker slung an arm around Tali, who was doing nearly as badly as Joker was, but having a much better time. She giggled when Joker sat next to her. "You and me, Tali. They're out to get us." Joker made squinty eyes at Nicole.

"Raise," Nicole said, very calmly. Joker tossed up a middle finger as he threw his cards onto the table.

"Tali, I'm not gonna lie," Joker started, his words slurring. "I looked at yer cards and you ain't winnin' this hand. Take it from a very experienced loser."

"I will heed your wisdom, o fuzzy one," Tali quipped.

"_Fuzzy_?"

"No more vodka for you, I think," Ashley opined. Joker made some noise that could have been disgust or agreement. Nicole and Wrex watched the proceedings silently, keeping their cards face down on the table. Garrus, meanwhile, was very studiously examining everyone's faces.

"Don't bother trying to tell who's bluffing, Garrus," Kaidan said kindly. "Most of us aren't that good and Shepard, Wrex, and Ashley are too good to figure out anyway."

"Ugh," Garrus muttered, folding with a disgusted flourish. "Human faces. How do you even keep your expressions straight without mandibles? It's like staring at a plank of wood."

"Wiser heads prevail," Kaidan said, folding as well.

"Well, Doctor, you gonna match the bet?" Wrex asked. He sounded genuinely curious.

"I think so, yes." Liara wagered more of her chips, leaving her with very few remaining. Nicole was watching her very carefully. Wrex and Ashley matched it too. Then Nicole folded.

"Typical human," Wrex muttered. "I'm callin' it. Show me the goods." Ashley showed two tens, while Wrex had three eights—but Liara, with a small smile, revealed three aces. Nicole was grinning in a fashion which could only be described as "uncharacteristic." "Terrifying" might also have worked.

"If someone who's just starting bets that high, they've got a pretty good hand, krogan," she said. Wrex scoffed, but he looked impressed. By the end of the night Nicole had won the most, and Ashley was a very respectable second—but Liara had still done well, better than Nicole would've thought. She had a ruthless streak Nicole hadn't expected.

"Pah. Yeah, sure you can win a poker contest," Wrex said grandly, directing his blunt stare at Nicole, "But I'd like to see you try your hand at a real game of chance. Varren pits, for instance."

"Sure," Nicole said smoothly, "But next time we're betting real money."

"OOOOOH, SMACKDOWN!" Joker yelled, being supported by a very cautious Tali. Garrus helped her with the inebriated pilot and asked,

"Should our pilot be this drunk before a mission?"

"The man has a point," Kaidan said.

"Send him to Chakwas, she'll flush him out. He'll feel like shit, but he deserves it. Never dreamed he'd play so poorly." Nicole sounded like she was half-joking. Garrus gave a mock salute and said,

"Aye-aye, sir. C'mon, Jeff…." They were on a first name basis already, Nicole reflected. They must have been talking more than Nicole thought. Garrus and Tali were chatting amicably as they hauled Joker out of the cargo bay, where they'd held their game. Wrex left shortly with Ashley, leaving Kaidan, Liara, and Nicole. Kaidan was clearly waiting for something, while Liara just didn't look entirely sure what to do. She seemed to settle on saying,

"Thank you both. This was a lovely night." Then she left, and Nicole was alone with Kaidan.

"Commander, permission to speak freely?"

"Of course."

"Commander, I'm just a little surprised that you're taking two non-Alliance crewmembers with you on Feros."

"You mean you're surprised I haven't taken you out yet," Nicole replied. Alenko, to his credit, didn't look ashamed.

"Yes. Is it just me, or are you avoiding me? Have I done something to offend you, or something?"

"No, Lieutenant." Nicole was starting to think everyone on this ship was afraid of offending her. Did she really seem so easy to upset? But she had to admit, Alenko did make her uneasy, for reasons entirely outside his control.

"Commander, if it's anything about my service history—"

"It is. But not in the way that you think."

Kaidan waited.

"Yes, sir?"

Nicole thought she had the measure of Kaidan. He was a decent man, a good soldier, a skilled biotic. He had frequent migraines and not inconsiderable burdens, Nicole knew, but then again—so did she.

"You remind me a little too much of myself," Nicole said honestly. "You were raised in that biotic school, right?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"I know your service history, Alenko. I know your record. I don't blame you for anything that happened, Lieutenant," Nicole said, trying not to sound hard as stone. "I was raised in a military school, too. Not quite the same as yours, but … similar. I think you're a capable soldier, Kaidan, but Feros isn't the right mission. They have a lot of colonists down there. Could be more than a few 'human biotics are abominations' backwater types out there." Kaidan flinched when she said it, and she felt a little regret. She wouldn't lie to him, though. "Plus, I know you. I know Ashley, and I know Wrex. But I don't know how Garrus or Liara will perform in the field. I need to find out as soon as possible."

"I guess it's just … why the asari? Forgive me Commander, but she doesn't exactly seem battle-hardened."

"You'd be surprised. She has extremely powerful barriers, and the first time I saw her use them was under extreme duress. She also has extensive knowledge of the Protheans and is a first-rate archaeologist. Those skills will be useful if we do find anything connected to all of this."

"Right."

"Is that all, Staff Lieutenant?"

"That's all, Commander."

"Good."

He left her. Nicole could tell that he wasn't entirely satisfied, but she couldn't tell him the truth. How could she say that when she had read how Kaidan had killed his brutal training supervisor in an accident, it filled Nicole with jealousy and dread? How could she say that she wished she had been strong enough to fight back, to gouge Gabreau's eyes out and kill him any one of the thousand times she'd had the chance? How could she tell him that when she looked at him, she saw another version of her nightmares?


	14. Chapter 14

_Brief note: I'm upping the rating on BtF to M in this chapter for depictions of graphic violence and gore. I still don't plan to include any overtly sexual scenes, but I did want to keep the rating representative of the content. If you're not comfortable with that sort of thing, I hope this has been a warning: there's a lot of blood, gore, and some reasonably gross stuff in this chapter._

XXX

"All right, Garrus, Liara, this will both be your first time under my command," Nicole instructed. They were all just outside the airlock, wearing combat armor; Nicole had her helmet slung under one arm, while Garrus was fully outfitted. Liara was wearing an asari breathing device and some minor protection along her head ridges, since if asari wore anything as restricting as a full helmet, it set something off in the equilibrium of their skull. Asari designers had been trying to come up with a full helmet that an asari could wear without vomiting in her hardsuit, but so far it seemed doomed to failure. "I want you to understand something. If I give an order, you follow it without question. Understood?"

"Yes, sir," Garrus said in strict fashion. Liara nodded.

"You will not deviate from any orders I give you in a combat scenario for any reason. Especially you, Liara." Nicole turned to the asari, who to her credit took Nicole's words with equal seriousness. "Your biotics are phenomenal but you haven't been involved in an active gunfight in a while. We already know you can block geth rifles. I'm probably going to need you to use that skill."

"Yes, Commander."

"Just one last thing. In front of civilians or on the battlefield, it's Commander Shepard. But for god's sake just call me Nicole when we're off-duty. That goes for both of you." Nicole slid on her helmet as the Normandy's VI confirmed the air lock was secure. It was a fully breathable planet, but protocol was protocol—and you didn't want to bring a foreign contaminant onto a starship.

"That will probably take some getting used to, Commander," Garrus said dubiously.

"Most things do. Remember to stay safe. Don't get into a fight you can't win. Follow my orders. If we get split up, return to the _Normandy_. All right. Let's go."

XXX

The _Freedom_ was a small ship with stealth capabilities that Ten hadn't known existed. It was certainly the smallest vessel she'd ever seen capable of jumping through a Relay; there was barely enough room for the cockpit and one other chamber, a small armoury with a sleeping pod. Ten was standing behind Tobias, who smoothly piloted the ship into orbit. With extensive surgery, she'd changed her facial features significantly, and raised the melatonin levels in her skin. She didn't resemble anyone who'd ever been at Shadowhill now, but she resembled a lot of people—she'd chosen a very common face.

"Shepard doesn't know about the Thorian," Tobias told her. "Or at least we don't think she does. That may be your advantage. She'll be fighting geth and who knows what else down there. She should be plenty occupied."

"Even so, I can't take her in a direct engagement," Ten said. Tobias smiled at her, a perfectly mirthless expression that chilled her to her bones.

"Don't doubt yourself so much."

"I still don't see why you're not accompanying me."

"I will be busy preparing a … let's call it a back-up plan."

"Right," Ten muttered. She knew that Tobias wasn't telling her nearly everything, but the "watch" clamped to her wrist gave her another reminder of his hold over her, in the form of an hourly, microscopic injection of the Stigma. She could only pray that Tobias wasn't lying about his ability to replenish the supply. She had no way to generate more of the drug, and without it, she'd die in weeks.

_Better a quick death,_ Ten thought. None of the suffering, none of the long agony of withdrawal. Shepard was monstrous, but at least she wasn't sadistic. She'd just slit her throat and be done with it. Ten wondered, for a moment, how Tobias would have killed her, if he'd decided to. She thought he would be quick about it, too. Most of the survivors of Shadowhill were that way. All of them were too acquainted with pain to have any real desire to see more than was necessary. The ones who enjoyed it always died, unable to make the grade.

"I'll drop you close to Zhu's Hope, but not too close. Make sure to use the tech cloak I gave you. It won't shield you from vision, but it will keep you off scanners."

"Well I didn't expect to become invisible," Ten said dryly. Tobias shrugged.

"There exists a cell working on that technology as we speak. Remember, Ten. Do this one task and you'll never have to worry about Gabreau for the rest of your life. You'll never have to see me again. Not another moment in withdrawal. You'll even get to keep all your teeth and hair, thanks to the improvements I made to the drug." He smiled at her, his grin entirely too pleasant. They descended into orbit and Ten reflected that if she really was going to die, she wouldn't mind all that much.

XXX

Feros had every appearance of being a massively colonized city-planet, like Illium or Earth. However, the concrete walkways were all degraded, and in the distance it was easy to see a dozen crumbling skyscrapers. Structures over 50,000 years old, remnants of the Prothean culture. It was shocking to believe they were still standing. The _Normandy _had landed on what looked like an ancient town square, nearby the complex of buildings where the Zhu's Hope colony had been founded. As Nicole, Garrus, and Liara walked out of the ship, they saw a man waving at them and running to meet them.

"Hi! Are you the Spectre the Council sent?" The man asked eagerly. Nicole realized, with some amusement, that he was looking to Garrus.

"That'd be me, yeah," Nicole said. The man looked at her, and after what looked like a great internal struggle said,

"Oh. I see. Hi, I'm David Al Talaqani. Fai Dan sent me, he was hoping to speak with you."

"Fai Dan?"

"He's our leader. He—"

The man's words were cut off as a laser bolt dug into his neck, killing him before he even had time to scream. Nicole grabbed her sniper and yelled,

"Cover, _now!_ Sniper, 6th story of the building at the far side of the square!" Nicole had already ducked behind some fallen rubble as she levelled her own sniper at the geth, squeezing the trigger in one swift motion. The geth's head exploded in the distance, and it went down. "Garrus, give me a full tech sweep of the area! Switch to a high band, they must be masking their frequencies!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

"Liara, get ready. If you see so much as a flashlight, I want barriers on all of us. Prioritize yourself, your armor's lightest."

"Understood!"

_ Not the military response_, Nicole thought absurdly. She looked across the square through her scope, searching for more geth.

"Shepard, there's at least three geth coming towards us, from that pathway."

"Right. Liara, can you prepare a biotic singularity?"

"Yes, Commander Shepard."

"All right. On my signal. They'll be shielded against biotics. Garrus, we have to peel that shielding off." Garrus nodded and readied his assault rifle; Nicole noted approvingly that he had his weapon modified to disrupt shields. The geth walked heedlessly down the narrow alley between two buildings, one of them carrying a rocket launcher. The geth fought with a suicidal determination, since their real selves—their programs—suffered no threat from combat. "Garrus, covering fire!"

Garrus launched a spray of assault rifle fire downrange, but the geth just walked forward, ignorant of the damage their shields were taking. The shock troopers raised their own weapons and fired, but Liara raised her barriers in time to deflect the bullets. The rocket trooper jerked his weapon up, but Nicole was faster: with a single movement she raised her rifle, took aim, and squeezed the trigger. She knew without looking the trajectory of the bullet. There was a vicious explosion as it collided with the rocket the geth had just fired, sending all the geth flying against the walls of the alleyway.

"Liara! Now!" Liara stood up and extended a hand, looking almost peaceful. A dark blue ball of energy appeared over the scattered geth, while gently pulsating waves of energy lifted them from the ground. They looked almost comical, floating in the air, one of them having lost an arm from the explosion. Liara clenched her hand into a fist and they were pulled towards the sphere, colliding with each other in a vicious crunch of metal. They were actually warping under the force of Liara's biotics.

Nicole raised her sniper and shot each of them once in the chest. She walked back to where Al Talaqani's body was and closed his eyes. At least his death hadn't been painful—the shot had severed his brainstem and killed him instantly. There was at least that.

"Damn," Garrus muttered, his flanged voice even more metallic over the comm in Nicole's helmet. "There must have been some way to save him."

"Probably not," Nicole muttered. "The geth was well hidden. Its programming must have suggested taking out the most vulnerable target first, once we were exposed. It's a machine. Some things they just do better than us."

As they advanced towards Zhu's Hope, they encountered more geth, dispatching of them with relative ease now that they knew what was coming. Garrus proved to be a good shot, and Liara's biotics were more powerful than Nicole would have hoped. Still, by the time they reached the colony, she could tell that Liara was exhausted. Using those biotics so much had to take a toll. The colonists looked at them with some suspicion, and whenever Nicole identified herself as a Spectre or Alliance marine, they instructed her to speak with Fai Dan. The prefab units made up most of the housing, but the colony seemed to be centered around a crashed freighter. All that Nicole managed to get out of the colonists with respect to the fallen ship was that it was called the _Borealis._

"Something about this place feels off," Garrus muttered, as they walked past the prefab buildings. Nicole could feel the colonists' stares, but she knew that the second she turned to look, they would occupy themselves with something else.

"I agree," Nicole said. "These people aren't just scared of geth. There's something we can't see here. Keep your guard up."

"When you mentioned Al Talaqani, they did not so much as bat an eyelash. Are they in shock, perhaps? No doubt there have been many casualties caused by the geth." Liara sounded worried.

"Perhaps," Nicole said, "But I'm not convinced that's it."

When they did find Fai Dan, at the far end of the colony, he was accompanied by a woman in light armor. She was carrying an assault rifle, though she'd left the safety on. When Shepard, Garrus, and Liara approached, she stiffened, and her grip on the rifle tightened.

"Helmets off. I want to see your faces." The man next to her, Fai Dan, looked pained, and said,

"That is not necessarily. Arcelia, please, these soldiers are here to help."

"How do we know that?"

"If we weren't here to help, do you really think we'd have our weapons stowed?" Nicole asked. Arcelia didn't look impressed. Nicole took her helmet off as a measure of good faith. Arcelia flinched a little when she saw the scar, and Nicole immediately thought: _One of those._ "I'm Commander Shepard, a Council Spectre. I was sent here to deal with the geth."

"You're some kind of big hero, huh?"

"Not even slightly. Just tell me what you know about the geth."

"So what, you three are going to storm the tower and take out an entire dropship?" Arcelia scoffed.

"Arcelia! That is enough," Fai Dan insisted. "The geth have a dropship attached to ExoGeni Headquarters—that's the company that founded the colony. They repurposed one of the old Prothean buildings for their HQ, and now it's crawling with geth!"

"Let me guess—the way there is _also_ crawling with geth."

"I'm afraid so. There is a tower leading to a Prothean skyway which should provide an easy route—ExoGeni has a Mako-class jeep they use to make the trip, Arcelia left it by the tower when she made her way here."

"Made her way here?" Nicole asked, unable to keep venom out of her voice. Unsurprisingly, Arcelia stiffened.

"I'm a fucking rent-a-cop, okay? I was hired to deal with kids spray-painting graffiti on Prothean ruins. When I saw geth, I got out with as many as I could take with me. Most of the other security guards are dead."

"Fair enough. So that's our way up." Nicole kept her opinions on Arcelia's actions to herself.

"Yes, but the tower is crawling with geth, and what's worse, there are geth in the tunnels below—there's some sort of signal generator that's co-ordinating their attacks and scrambling scanners."

"Yeah, we found that out the fun way," Garrus muttered. When Fai Dan looked at him questioningly, Nicole added:

"Al Talaqani is dead. A geth shot him at long range, and we were ambushed twice on our way here." She waited for Fai Dan's reaction, but he only seemed anxious—but what about? Her gut told her he was hiding something. It also told her to gouge out his eyes and rip his secrets from him screaming, but that she clamped down on. Just Shadowhill. Old memories.

"How terrible," Fai Dan said, not entirely convincingly. His eyes kept flickering, between Nicole and her squadmates, though they never quite settled on any one of them.

"Indeed. We'll go take care of the geth in the tower and the tunnels."

They left Fai Dan and Arcelia to head towards a stairway which led to the tower. The second they were out of earshot, Nicole muttered into the comm,

"That man is not right mentally. I'm not sure what it is. It looks like brainwashing, or some kind of drug—I don't know." She opened a link with the _Normandy_. "Joker, relay this to XO Pressley. Seal off the ship, and have Wrex, Ashley, and Kaidan ready for action. Do not leave the _Normandy_, and do not admit any colonists to the ship. Understood?"

_"Yes, Commander._"

The geth in the tower were easy enough to wipe out—Garrus and Nicole handled most of the heavy duty combat, while Liara pulled more than her own weight with her biotics. More than once, Nicole was astonished by the sheer destructive force the asari was able to conjure up.

"Kinda surprised you never wound up as a commando, T'Soni," Garrus opined, while surveying scrap metal that had been a geth before it had been introduced to Liara's biotics. Garrus had stripped its shields with admirably accurate fire, given the fact that he'd nearly been shot by a geth sniper. Nicole reminded herself to mention that, later.

"Oh, no, I do not think that is quite the life for me," Liara said, leaning forward on her knees and taking a breath. Such extensive usage of her biotics was clearly taking a toll. "Too much danger."

"Yeah, not like this," Garrus replied wryly.

"This is different," Liara insisted.

"Sure, sure. In a few months we'll find you in some seedy Omega bar, guzzling ryncol and swindling some poor fool out of his credits." Garrus shook his head. "'First time playing poker' my spiky turian ass."

"I had a capable teacher," was all Liara said. She smiled in Nicole's direction, and Nicole was grateful her expression was hidden by her helmet. For some reason, she was blushing.

_I never blush_.

"Come on, Abbot and Costello."

"_Who?_"

"I think my translator may have glitched," Liara said uncertainly.

"Don't worry about it," Nicole said. Most of her outdated expressions were Anderson's fault, in some way or another.

After they'd cleared the tower, and the tunnels beneath, they returned to Zhu's Hope and informed Fai Dan that they should be safe for now. He seemed relieved, but also distracted in a way that Nicole couldn't quite put her finger on. She hoped that was just her own paranoia talking—the man had been through hell, no wonder he was a little shaken. And yet there was that pit of doubt in her stomach.

"No doubt there'll be some geth at the top of the elevator, as well," Nicole said, as they rode the ancient contraption to the height of the Prothean skyscraper. Once more, Liara was at the controls. Though Feros had been looted of any really valuable relics centuries ago, Nicole could still see the asari's obvious pleasure in working Prothean technology. Liara was smiling without thinking to.

"Just imagine," Liara whispered, "50,000 years ago, a Prothean would have operated these controls. Entire Prothean families might've used this. Politicians, doctors, educators … using this same panel."

"And then they vanished," Garrus said. "Or were wiped out, according to Saren."

"They were," Liara said, a hint of mourning in her voice. "I have seen it. So has Shepard."

"Unless that Beacon was a remarkably elaborate lie," Shepard said, though she didn't really mean it. The images had been so real, so painfully visceral, that it felt impossible for them to be lies. But she knew that feeling. At Shadowhill once she had been convinced she had been dropped, alone, in a derelict space station. She'd survived there for a month, the station on backup life support, scraping food and drink together from whatever she could find. At the end of the month, Gabreau had just appeared in what Nicole assumed was an abandoned cafeteria, and informed her that she was on the other side of the asteroid. Her reaction had been a strangled, inarticulate cry of anger. They'd tortured her for more than a week for that. The torturer had used a bucket, salt water, and a corded rope. That had been all he'd needed.

It didn't take much to mess around inside someone's head. Just the right planning. That was why Nicole wasn't yet convinced that the Reapers existed, not even if every instinct she had screamed that they were real. That was also why she did not trust a single thing any of the colonists had said.

XXX

"Is it just me or are these geth getting smarter?" Garrus yelled.

"Just shut up and keep shooting!" Nicole barked, spinning the wheel of the ExoGeni Mako to avoid an anti-tank shell. Garrus was manning the cannon, while Liara was maintaining communications with Tali via the jeep's comm system.

_"The geth are more intelligent when they are around more geth! Is there some sort of cluster of them nearby?" _Tali asked.

"There's a big goddamn ship stuck to the ExoGeni building, if that counts!"

_"Ah, um, that's probably it. But if you can somehow disable the ship, you should be able to take out the majority of the geth!"_

"What do you want me to do, shoot at it?" Garrus demanded hysterically. Nicole revved the Mako's engines and charged through several geth shock troopers, their metal torsos _crunching_ beneath the weight of the Mako.

_"While it's attached to that building it'll be using most of its power just to adhere to the surface. If you can find some way to disconnect the claw, the ship may very well collapse under gravity."_

"Wait," Garrus said. "Are you telling me we have to kill a space ship?"

"Looks that way."

"You've got that look on your face again, don't you?"

"I'm wearing a helmet, Garrus."

"I know, Nicole." Despite the fact that a geth armature was exploding in front of them, Liara laughed a little—and miraculously, so did Nicole.

XXX

They took the Mako as far as they could, until rubble in the road forced them away from the jeep. As they advanced through what felt like a giant parking garage, Nicole heard someone calling out to them from a lower level. She trained her sniper rifle on the noise, then put it down. Civilian.

"Oh my god, you're not geth!" Nicole signalled Garus and Liara to approach. The woman was in her fifties, wearing a scientist's garb. She looked absolutely at the end of her tether.

"Last time I checked," Nicole muttered, shipping her sniper rifle. "You with ExoGeni?"

"Yes, we managed to get out of the building—it's swarming with geth!"

"That's the least surprising thing I've heard all day," Nicole replied. Garrus tried to make a chuckle sound like a cough. "How many of you are there?"

"Come on, I'll take you to them. Mr. Jeong will likely want to talk with you." The woman took them below to a large complex where a few ExoGeni staff, and two security guards, had assembled. One of the men rushed towards them, looking harried and irritable.

"When the geth attacked, we all tried to escape," The woman said. "We managed to get this far. I'm Juliana Baynham."

"Commander Shepard."

"The _Spectre_ Shepard?"

"That's the one. Didn't think you all had heard."

"Of course we had." Baynham sounded confused.

"Funny. When I mentioned it to the colonists at Zhu's Hope they seemed real surprised. And slow."

"Slow?"

"Never mind. Tell me what happened."

"Well—you know what's happened, really. The geth took the headquarters, and now we're all stuck here hoping they'll be stopped. But please, there's something—"

"You'd better not be about to disclose company secrets, _Juliana_," Jeong interrupted, sounding like he'd missed his coffee. "I hope you can understand the potential for legal repercussions in all of this." Jeong looked imperiously at Shepard. "I'm Ethan Jeong, district manager and temporary leader of this lot. I'm _also_ responsible for representing the rights and privileges of the ExoGeni Corporation, since no one else seems to want to!"

"I'm talking about my daughter, you asshole!" Baynham looked furious. She turned back to Shepard. "Please, it's my daughter—Lizbeth. She's a scientist, she came here with me, she—she's still _in there_!"

"She's probably dead," Jeong muttered. Baynham turned on him in silent fury. Shepard took off her helmet.

"Shut up," Nicole advised him. The way she was staring at him left him little other option. She walked towards him. "Do you have any idea why the geth might be here? I want you to think _very_ hard about that question."

"None at all, Spectre." He crossed his arms and glared at her. "The geth simply appeared. Do your job and get rid of them, but you may not violate ExoGeni protocol in_ any _way, or there will be very serious—"

Nicole grabbed him by the throat.

"You're _lying_ to me, suit. I don't like it when people lie to me." She lifted him up like he was a doll. The security guards behind him advanced, but they clearly didn't want to get involved. They saw Nicole, saw the entirely different class of dangerous she was in. Like Arcelia, they were rent-a-cops. "Don't you understand what 'Spectre' means? If you don't give me what I want then I'm going to put your name on a blacklist, Jeong. Do you know what _that_ means, or are you the special kind of slow?"

She let him drop to the ground. He gasped for air and clutched at his throat, looking up to her in horror. Everyone in the room was very, very quiet. Nicole bent down and looked at him, resting her hands on her knees. He was splayed on the ground, staring at her in silent shock.

"It means that if you set foot in Council space, you will be swarmed upon by legal representatives eager and willing to turn you over to the Spectre who wants to turn your corpse into jujubes and stir the chunks into soup. Am I making myself clear now?"

"The legal—"

"Haven't you been listening, genius?" Nicole snarled, her expression somehow utterly without emotion. "I _am_ the law. I am _above_ the law. I will bury you _and_ ExoGeni if you cause even one person to die because you wanted to keep your company safe. Start talking or I'm going to practice on your kneecap." She leaned forward and grabbed one of his legs, her grip vicelike, unnaturally strong. "_Now_."

"Ma'am—" Baynham this time. Nicole looked back over her shoulder. Garrus was unreadable behind his mask, but his body language was uncomfortable. Liara looked like she was trying very hard not to look shocked.

"Quiet." That was all it took. Shepard turned back to Jeong. "You're going to start talking or I'm going to start revisiting my favourite memory aids. _Understand_?" She jostled his kneecap for emphasis.

"Th-there's a creature! An ancient creature, tens of thousands of years old, and powerful, it's some sort of plant! It's called the Thorian, and it's something like sentient. ExoGeni's been studying it in the basement of the headquarters. It has some kind of psychic ability, but we're not sure what."

Nicole smiled and let go of his kneecap. She pulled her helmet back on.

"Now was that so hard?" She turned to Baynham and said, "I'll find your daughter. Liara, Garrus, we're leaving."

They left. Out of earshot, Garrus stopped walking. Nicole turned to him and waited.

"Shepard, all that … did you really mean it?"

"All of it? No."

"Shepard, that—"

"It was what was necessary. I don't _plan_ on making Ethan Jeong's life a living hell, but he needed to believe I did if he was going to talk. The Thorian sounds _precisely_ like the sort of thing Saren wouldn't want us to find. He said it's tens of thousands years old. Maybe old enough that it remembers the Protheans."

"Right. Sorry, Shepard, I just—"

"Don't worry about it. I'm a good actor. T'Soni, you okay?" Nicole felt her gut twisting in regret. She didn't understand it, and liked the feeling even less. Liara didn't even look surprised.

"Yes. That was rather brilliant, actually. No doubt we never would have gotten that information otherwise." Liara wasn't bluffing. "I was a little surprised at the time, but once I realized what you were doing, I realized I had to continue to look surprised, so Jeong would believe you. You know, the innocent asari all surprised and dismayed by the brutal Spectre she's been roped into working with." Liara smiled a little playfully, and Nicole felt her heart soaring. The dark twist in her gut dissolved. "That sort of thing."

Nicole grinned behind her helmet.

"See, Garrus? Liara gets it."

"Well, could you just—I don't know, wink at me or something, next time? Paint some mandibles on your face and do this with them." Garrus wiggled his fingers in front of his face. Nicole actually chuckled.

"Come on. We've got a space ship to kill, remember?"

XXX

"Are you seriously telling me they stuck their load-bearing insect claw thing beneath an industrial-strength loading door?" Garrus sounded like he was dreaming. Nicole raised a hand.

"Shhh. Don't ruin this moment for me."

"What?"

"This is exactly like the Rancor pit." This time, both Garrus and Liara said,

"_What?_"

"I'm going to need to educate you two," Nicole muttered. With the flip of a switch the loading door descended on the claw and broke through it like a knife through a lobster claw. There was a sudden, hideous groaning, and Nicole was suddenly aware of the massive weight shifting, falling away from the wall. She watched through the hole made by the claw as the ship fell, a massive metal body plummeting to the earth. When it hit the earth, there was an explosive sound of collapsing metal, and the building shook so violently that Nicole fell to her feet. A glut of flame tinted the light blue of eezo reached up from the site of the crash, but luckily the building remained standing; the ExoGeni skyscraper was so tall that the ship landed quite a distance away from the building itself. Nicole pulled herself to her feet and offered a hand to Liara, who took it gratefully.

"Well, we took care of the geth," Garrus said wryly. They'd had to shoot their way through about a dozen squads to get to this room, but it had been doable. Both Garrus and Liara had proved far more capable than Nicole had dared to hope. Garrus had a keen tactical mind and a clear sense of the battlefield, while Liara was obviously a far more talented biotic than she'd admitted. At first she'd just thought that Liara was a typically well-trained asari, but in reality her biotic power was well beyond what Nicole knew most commandos could produce. Nicole was about to say something to that effect when her omnitool blipped, informing her that Joker was contacting her.

"Go ahead, Joker."

_"Uh, Commander, looks like you were right about sealing up the ship. The colonists have kind of gone crazy."_

"Gone crazy?"

_"Like, 'clawing at the ship and moaning like zombies' crazy."_

"Stay put. We'll be on our way."

As Nicole was turning to walk down the staircase to the ground level, she heard a noise. She raised a hand to stop Garrus and Liara, then quietly drew her pistol. Bowed over in a predatory stance, she inched into the room opposite them—and ducked when a wildly fired shot narrowly missed her head.

"Stay back! Stay—oh my god, are you geth?"

"No," Nicole said dryly. A young girl was waiting in the room, still holding a pistol towards Nicole and shaking with obvious terror. She'd probably never fired a gun before, given the look on her face. Nicole stowed her pistol. "Put the weapon down. Are you Lizbeth Baynham?"

"Y-yes. How do you know my name?"

"Your mother sent me. I'm Nicole Shepard, Alliance Commander and Council Spectre." Her titles were becoming more than a mouthful. "I'm here about the geth attack. Don't worry. You're safe."

"Oh thank god," the girl whispered. She dropped the gun and collapsed to the ground, hugging her knees to her chest. "I thought—I thought that you were, you know. Geth." Nicole knelt down so that she was on Lizbeth's level and took off her helmet, looking into the girl's eyes. Nicole hoped her face wouldn't scare the poor girl.

"Hey. You're going to be fine, okay? I promise." Lizbeth looked up at her and jumped back a little. "But I need you to work with me, all right? I want to help everyone here. But I can't do that if I don't know what's happening."

"What do you mean?"

"The Thorian. It's why the geth are here, isn't it?" Nicole could tell from the look on Lizbeth's face that she knew it was. "Tell me everything you know, Lizbeth. Please. Let me help."

"I—I couldn't believe what they were doing. I kept thinking I should tell someone, but I just didn't know what to—"

"It's okay," Nicole interrupted. "Don't worry. Just tell me."

"The Thorian is a lifeform at least as old as the Prothean occupation here. It's like some sort of super-plant—like the ancient trees that used to exist on earth that survived millions of years, because they were sort of like an entire forest? It's like that. But sentient. _Really_ sentient." Lizbeth was talking in a rapid babble. Nicole decided not to interrupt her. "It has extremely powerful psychic capabilities, and it thinks of us as lesser forms of life. It—it's taking over the minds of the colonists."

"What do you mean, 'taking over'?" Nicole asked, a little too sharply.

"It's using some kind of spore to control them. ExoGeni knows. ExoGeni was just observing the effects the Thorian was having on the colonists. That's what—that's what's happening. I'm sorry. I wanted to stop it, but I'm just a scientist! I only came here with my mom, for the research, to try and find a better life. I didn't … I didn't…."

"It's okay," Nicole said. Very gently, she laid a hand on Lizbeth's shoulder. Lizbeth grasped Nicole's hand with her own shaking fingers. "It's okay. You did the right thing by telling me. I need to get back to the colony to try and keep the colonists from doing anything drastic. If you're right, then the Thorian doesn't like the fact that my ship is here. The group that your mother's with is on the way."

"You'll take me to her?"

Nicole nodded.

"I'll take you to her."

XXX

"Hold up." Nicole signalled for Garrus and Liara to stop. Lizbeth stayed behind Garrus, apparently feeling safer behind seven feet of armored turian. At the end of the corridor they were in, Nicole could see a krogan getting increasingly frustrated with a V.I., banging at the controls. Nicole unslung her sniper and inched forward, trying to get close enough for a killshot—

Quicker than Nicole would've expected, the krogan turned around and whipped a grenade out of a pocket, hurling it down the hall at them. On nothing but instinct Nicole tackled Liara out of the way, while Garrus grabbed Lizbeth and ducked into a demolished room of cubicles. Nicole crawled behind some rubble and braced herself for an explosion. Instead, there was a sound like breaking glass, and a surge of electricity that shocked Nicole in her bones but didn't do any real damage. When it passed Nicole realized that the HUD in her helmet was gone, and her sniper was useless. She tore the helmet off in frustration and looked down at Liara. In her haste Nicole had pinned the asari to the ground.

"You okay?"

"Yeah."

"Good."

"EMP grenade," the krogan said. From the volume of his voice and the thudding of his feet, Nicole could tell he was getting closer. "Disables weapons, scrambles biotics. Little trick of Saren's. The way I see it, you _pyjaks_ don't stand a chance in hell of taking me in a fight." Nicole got to her feet and stared the krogan down, watching the stupid grin forming on his flat face.

"Both of you stay back. Protect Lizbeth."

"What? Shepard—"

"That is an_ order_, Vakarian." Nicole reached into the back of her armour, into a secret compartment that she'd installed herself. She unslung a long, curved dagger, like a claw, with a ring around the end of the handle. She slid her index finger through the ring and clasped the dagger in her hand, feeling the familiar weight of the weapon. The blade was six inches of wicked, grinning steel, tapering down to a deadly point. It was as natural in her hand as the scar on her face.

The krogan was fully armoured but also unarmed—his grenade had disabled his own shotgun. He leaned forward and charged, the way Nicole knew he would. She dropped into a fighting stance, crouching like a predator, dagger in one hand, the other braced against the ground. She felt the earth pounding as he charged, watched him build momentum, knew that he was moving with enough force to turn over a jeep. The distance between them shortened, and like any good krogan he raised his head to roar—

Nicole whirled out of her stance faster than seeing, her legs wrapping around the krogan's outstretched neck in the moment he should've turned her to pulp. He screamed in inarticulate rage and reached for her with a stubby hand, trying to slow himself, but Nicole had already slipped onto his back, grabbing onto his hump with her free hand and bracing her knee against his mountainous shoulder. In one swift movement she jabbed the butt of her dagger into the side of his neck, choking his air supply to delay his blood rage, then grabbed him by the neck and swung herself down, using the sheer torque to twist his body into the wall. Before he could recover, she jabbed him in the throat, then slashed just beneath his left eye with her dagger, leaving a deep, violent wound. Blood gushed over his eye, and he thrashed his way back to his feet, Nicole always ducking away from his vicious swings with laser precision. He reached for her again, but she slipped past the blow and slashed at the other side of his face, blinding him in both eyes. Taking advantage of his disorientation, she grabbed onto his shoulders in each hand and kicked off of his chest, landing several feet away from the flailing, furious krogan.

Even an enraged krogan couldn't see through his own blood. The krogan stumbled towards Nicole, but by now his movements were furiously sloppy, easy to predict. She barely even had to try to get out of the way, and when he went for a vicious overhand she grabbed his elbow and swung herself back up onto his back, using his hump as a brace again. She reached forward with one hand and grabbed his forehead plate, digging into the wound she'd made. She raised the dagger, waited a moment—as she expected, the krogan flailed an arm up to try to prevent what she was going to do—then slashed downward, digging the knife into the base of his plate, slashing deep past thick krogan skull and brain matter, creating a wedge in his flesh. Genetically engineered muscles heaving, she dug her fingers in and yanked backwards. With a sucking sound, the entire cranial plate detached from the krogan's skull, leaving his head a bleeding, pulpy mess. She took her dagger and plunged it three times into his brain, cutting off each brain stem.

The giant body shuddered to the ground, and Nicole calmly dismounted it once he was dead. She looked at the faded green cranial plate in her hand, bits of sinew and bone still clinging to it, and tossed it aside. Then she stomped on what was left of the krogan's skull. No reaction. He was dead. She spun the dagger on the ring, flicking the blood off of it in a simple, clean gesture, the way it had been designed, all the krogan matter flowing out of aerodynamic grooves. Her arms were still soaked in krogan blood as she returned the clean dagger to the compartment in her armour. Liara and Garrus were both staring. Garrus had taken off his helmet, too, and his shock was plain on his turian face. Liara looked like she didn't know what to say. Nicole suddenly felt embarrassed, like she'd just changed her clothes without realizing someone was watching.

"Where—where did you get one of those?" Garrus asked hoarsely. Of course he'd know what it was. "Only Colonels in the turian military are given a Talon."

"That's true. Colonels, and whoever those Colonels decide to pass the weapon down to. I once knew a turian who owned one of these. He didn't have any next of kin, and … I was the only one who came for him when he died." Nicole's face was utterly blank as she spoke. Garrus bowed his head respectfully.

"I'm sorry. I thought maybe you'd just—"

"It's okay. I came by it honourably. If I hadn't, it would've been your duty as a turian to take it from me. I know." Nicole unsheathed the dagger again and read the name inscribed on the hilt. _Rameus Talinor._

That had been Talon's real name. It had taken a lot of searching to find out who he was, but luckily, Shadowhill had trained her to find people with nothing more than a nickname. When she'd flown to Palaven during shore leave, she'd been hoping to find some family, to tell them how he'd died. But there had been no one. Talon—Rameus—had been a Colonel in the turian military, before his talents as a torturer were put to use. He had felt ashamed at this vocation and had resigned, leaving the military and his Talon dagger behind. He'd taken the name, Nicole gathered, as a combination of joke and grim reminder.

When she had told the officer in charge of Talon's belongings, he had promised not to tell another soul. Nicole believed him; turians didn't lie. She told him nearly everything, or at least everything that related to Talon. Then the man had given her Talon's dagger, since it was a great crime for such a weapon not to be passed on. The turians believed that every soldier should have one last weapon, one last, simple tool, to use when all else was lost. With a Talon, it was said, a great soldier could carve a path to victory from certain defeat. It was a weapon of subterfuge, cunning, and stealth; rare for the turians. But it had been Talon's kind of weapon.

It was hers, too.

"Who did it belong to?" Garrus snapped her out of her reverie.

"A man named Rameus Talinor. He used the name 'Talon' when I knew him. He was a good man. He'd done things he wasn't proud of, but … he was a good man. He saved my life when I was very young." She sheathed the blade. "Our electronics should be back online soon—that grenade wasn't an _actual_ EMP, or we'd be dead. Just some kind of tech scrambler. A hard reboot should fix it."

When their gear was fixed, Nicole pulled her helmet back on, glad to hide behind its steel surface. But when she saw Liara, who was still staring at her like she didn't know what to make of her, Nicole again felt a sense of hot shame. The krogan had needed to die, but the only way Nicole knew how to kill a krogan was to do it brutally. She wished that Liara hadn't seen that. Garrus was a turian—they understood brutality in war, practically had it bred into them. But Liara….

Nicole forced the thought out of her head. It was unproductive. What was done was done. She couldn't change it now, no more than she could change who she was. Even if she wished that she could.

XXX

Lizbeth rushed into the complex where the other ExoGeni escapees were, and though she was annoyed Nicole couldn't blame her. But when she heard shouting, and what sounded like violence, Nicole ran after her, Garrus and Liara following in her wake. When she arrived in the chamber where the survivors had gathered, she saw one security guard cuffing Juliana Baynham, and another detaining Lizbeth. Lizbeth broke free and ran to her mother, hugging her in spite of the security guards.

"Stay out of this, Spectre!" Jeong declared, advancing towards her. She could see a pistol at his side. "When you took out that dropship, we were able to re-establish communications with ExoGeni headquarters, and they're decided—"

"They've decided to liquidate the entire colony, is what they've _decided_!" Baynham hissed. The security guard struck her in the stomach, knocking her to her feet. "You won't get away with this, Jeong!"

"Zhu's Hope is ExoGeni's property, Baynham, and that means that they can decide to cease funding if they so desire. If any of you try to interfere with ExoGeni's legal rights, there will be serious repercussions. _Immediate _repercussions." Jeong grinned like a fox in a bird's nest.

"That's true," Shepard conceded. She walked towards Jeong, and continued almost conversationally. "Do you know what the Council's first contact laws are?"

"I'm familiar—"

"Well, actually, it's not so much the _Council_ I'd be worried about," Nicole said, entirely too pleasantly, "It's the turians. They take first contact very seriously. After all, any pre-contact species possesses the potential to be dangerous. That's the kind of potential they'll start a war over, remember?"

"Are you referring to the First Contact War?" Jeong demanded, sounding scandalized that she might do such a thing.

"I'm referring to the Thorian. The giant psychic plant your company has been watching infect the minds of the Zhu's Hope colonists. Turns out ExoGeni's computers aren't so hard to hack." She approached, just slightly, looking down on him. Jeong wasn't terribly short, but Nicole was a tall woman. "You're going to contact ExoGeni, explain the situation to them, and make it very apparent that if they further jeopardize the lives of these colonists a _very_ pissed off Spectre is going to contact the turian Councillor and let him know that your corporation let a 50,000 year old _alien plant_ into the minds of about thirty colonists."

"Y-you can't do this!"

"Why not? ExoGeni violated one of the only laws I can think of that will start a war, not me. It's not my fault you're dumb fucks who think they're above consequences. Tell your guards to put that woman down and tell ExoGeni that they're probably going to need to filter considerable funds into Zhu's Hope to make up for the geth attack."

"For all you know the damn colonists are going to go crazy and claw their eyes out!"

"For all you know I'll claw your eyes out if that happens. Better hope it doesn't," Nicole advised him. "Send the message to ExoGeni. _Now_. That blacklist still exists, you know. You've been just annoying enough that I don't mind making you into a _personal_ distraction."

Jeong backed away, clambering over to the comm system. Nicole didn't smile, but inwardly she was pleased—he was exactly the kind of coward she'd hoped. Any more resistance and she would have had to shoot him in the knee, at least, and somehow, she didn't want to do that in front of Garrus or Liara. Didn't want to do it in front of anyone, really.

"Thank you, Spectre," Baynham said, her voice a great deal quieter, now. Twice now she'd seen Shepard threaten bloody murder, so Nicole wasn't too surprised at the barely masked dread on her face.

"I'll take care of the colonists, don't worry. _Without_ killing them."

"Thank you," Baynham repeated, making hurried motions to get out of Shepard's way. Lizbeth was looking at her very differently. Nicole signalled Liara and Garrus to follow her, and she left the group, feeling their eyes on her back. She put it out of her mind.

"Commander Shepard!" Nicole turned around, surprised, to see Lizbeth running up to them. The other survivors were watching.

"Yes?"

"I wanted to thank you. You might be a little frightening, but … I think you're a good person. You probably just saved our lives."

"The saving's not done yet. I have to keep those colonists from killing themselves."

"Here." Lizbeth handed her a small cluster of grenades, which was just about the last thing Nicole would've expected. "These were riot control grenades ExoGeni developed in case of an attack by the colonists. They should just knock them out—no fatalities."

"How sure are you?"

Lizbeth smiled, the kind of eager smile of an expert with an audience.

"Pretty sure. I designed them."

XXX

"T'Soni, when I throw this grenade, guide it to the colonists behind that cluster!"

"Yes, Commander!"

"Vakarian, concussive grenade! Just hit their cover, disorient them!"

They tore through the colonists in a matter of minutes. There were nearly twenty of them, all crazed and half mad, but only some of them had weapons and they tended to cluster together. Lizbeth's grenades worked as promised, and when they ran out it was a simple matter of knocking the remaining colonists out. Nicole checked all their pulses to make sure they were still alive, then signalled Joker on the _Normandy_.

"Joker, the cause of all this is something called the Thorian. Big sentient plant. According to the data I mined from the ExoGeni system, it should be beneath the freighter. That thing wasn't put there by accident."

"When did you mine the ExoGeni system for data?" Garrus asked, bewildered. Nicole shrugged.

"Had a program running in the background just about the entire time we were in the building."

There was a crane nearby—one which had been rather suspiciously guarded by colonists when they'd first arrived—and with a little work, she managed to move the freighter out of the way, revealing a path down into what looked like tunnels beneath the colony.

"Y'know, if you had asked me," Garrus said, looking into the tunnels with no great enthusiasm, "If I would ever wind up marching into crumbling Prothean tunnels to look for a psychic plant that apparently wanted to kill me, I probably would have called that bullshit."

"But only probably," Nicole said.

"I've been on worse dig sites," Liara said optimistically. "We may even be able to negotiate with the Thorian."

"Okay, name _one_ dig site worse than this, Liara. _One_."

"The last one," Liara said cooly. "I was trapped under a volcano when a crazy Spectre made it erupt with a mining laser." Nicole chuckled and walked into the tunnel, forcing Garrus and Liara to follow.

"'I want to track Saren down,' I said. 'It's my duty as a turian,' I said. The next time I make plans to chase rogue Spectres down, one of you talk me out of it." Garrus shook his head. "Did you know turians don't like being underground? Because we _really_ don't like being underground."

"Eh, humans evolved from tree climbers. We're not huge fans of it, either," Nicole admitted. Even through the filter on her helmet, she could smell the unpleasant decay of old dead earth, and also the faint but omnipresent scent of rot. Humans had a far more developed sense of smell than turians or asari, so she didn't mention it. No reason to freak them out.

"It always amazes me how much monkeys look like _siandi_ climbers," Liara said casually, obviously clinging to the conversation to keep her mind off of the danger. The last time they had been in an underground Prothean structure—well, a volcano had erupted.

"Actually, most habitable planets come up with a lot of similar basic variations on life," Nicole replied. "On Earth we have birds, and their ancestors the dinosaurs, which bear an uncommon resemblance to turians. It's like convergent evolution, but on the planetary scale. That's also why we all look like we're stamped from the same frame. Turns out it's pretty advantageous to be bipedal and about five to seven feet tall on most life-bearing planets."

"There is also a theory that there was some genetic tampering by the Protheans," Liara submitted. Nicole personally didn't hold a lot of stock in that theory, but she kept that much to herself. "The sentient convergent evolution theory does have its merits, but some in the scientific community find it a little hard to believe that a human being and an asari should be so similar without some sort of outside interference."

Nicole was so distracted, listening to Liara speak, that she almost didn't hear the footsteps—almost. She signalled Garrus and Liara just before Fai Dan lurched into view, stumbling along with a pistol in his hand. His grip on the weapon was so tight that his knuckles had turned white.

"_It_ wants me to kill you," Fai Dan said, his jaw clenching with effort. "It says I have to. But … _every thought hurts. Everything hurts._" He raised the pistol, pointing at Nicole. Nicole didn't blink. "When I try to … stop it, it … _argh!_"

Fai Dan pointed the pistol at his own head. Nicole raised a hand, trying to get him to point the gun at her, pleading with him, hating the fact that she already knew what would happen.

"Fai Dan, hang on. Listen to me, you don't—"

He pulled the trigger. Nicole's outstretched hand fell uselessly to her side.

"You tried," Garrus said softly. Nicole was surprised, especially from a turian—but then she realized that she shouldn't have been so surprised by Garrus Vakarian. He was more than his race. Most people were.

"There was nothing anyone could have done," Liara agreed. Nicole didn't say what she was thinking: that she was fast enough, quick enough, strong enough to have taken that gun away if she'd just moved. But Fai Dan had represented a risk, and years of training bored into her skull screamed at her not to take a risk for someone who was not mission critical. The knowledge galled at her. Dive roll to draw attention and avoid fire, sweep left leg, knock to ground, retrieve weapon, light concussion, check for pulse, apply medigel solution to inner ear to prevent brain injury. She could've done all that before he squeezed the trigger. Instead she had watched.

"Shepard, another colonist!" Nicole drew her own pistol and looked where Garrus' rifle was pointing, towards a figure stumbling towards them from the dark of the tunnels. The smell of rot hit her again, even worse, the sharp, churning smell of green mould on cheese or bread. Instinctively, Nicole backed away.

"That's not a colonist," Nicole said. No sooner had the words left her lips than the figure charged, emerging into the light like a grotesque parody of a human, its pallid limbs the color of dying leaves, its skin stretched and malformed, its mouth deformed and hanging open. Nicole, Garrus, and Liara all gunned the thing down, riddling the body with bullets. For a moment it stood dumbly, staring at them. It gagged, its sunken chest heaving, and a green ooze fell out of its mouth, cascading down over its body. It started dissolving, then, though whether because its own acid was eating it or just because that was how it died, Nicole couldn't say.

"That," Liara confirmed, "Was unpleasant."

"Well, if they all come at us one at a time we can just panic and shoot them all to death," Nicole said, slightly disapproving.

"Of course there's going to be more," Garrus muttered. "Geth? I can handle geth. Geth are nice and easy. Robots who want to kill you. Give me a robot any day over a barefaced plant zombie any day of the week. _Spirits_." Nicole looked at him.

"Feeling better?"

Garrus stopped to consider, then shrugged. "Little bit."

"Well, _I_ feel ill," Liara said. "As well as a great deal of resentment for your ability to wear helmets."

"You say that like it's weird," Garrus replied. He almost sounded offended.

"It _is_ weird. You put your _heads_ in buckets!"

"Let's discuss head-buckets later, shall we?" Nicole suggested. She stepped gingerly past the corpse of the monster and proceeded further into the tunnels, hoping that they wouldn't see too many more of the creepers. Unable to resist, she muttered, "I've got a bad feeling about this."

"And here I thought that was only me," Garrus added faintly. As they moved deeper into the tunnels, the light faded, save for occasional beams of light glancing through the rubble. The tunnels were narrow and constricting, but they were definitely leading somewhere. Nicole turned on the lights on her helmet, illuminating the darkness, the small cones of light catching a million particles of fluttering dust. The smell was growing worse, filling her nose and making her want to gag. Humans had a much more advanced sense of smell than either asari or turians, so Nicole didn't mention it.

There was a gasping, sucking sound in the dark, bouncing along the tunnel walls. Then, a long silence, the sort of quiet that was only possible in a long dark tunnel. The sound was answered by a moaning hiss. Then there was another, and another, and the dull slapping sound of naked feet on a cold stone floor. The slapping grew rapid, till it was like rainfall, and Nicole wished she'd brought a shotgun.

"Weapons ready! Liara, we're gonna need you on crowd control!"

"Yes, Commander!"

"Garrus, I want concussive grenades at the entrance to that tunnel, then we mow 'em down!" Nicole raised her pistol and waited, staring expectantly at the tunnel entrance. As the sounds grew larger, it occurred to her that they were coming from all around them, that they were presently standing in what was really a network of tunnels, and there were at least three entrances.

The creepers grabbed Liara first, a strangled scream the only indication of what went wrong. Nicole spun around and saw in horror that three of them had somehow grabbed the asari, one of them prying at her face mask with a skeletal hand. Nicole shot two and grabbed the other by one arm, wrenching it free. The arm separated from the body like rotten vegetation, green liquid spraying over Liara and Nicole. Nicole grabbed the rest of it by the torso, this time, and hurled it to one wall. The creature tried to drag itself to its feet, but its skull suddenly collapsed in a flare of blue light.

"More of 'em!" Garrus fired concussive rounds at each entrance to the tunnel, knocking down the creatures as they clambered over one another, trying to reach at their prey. Nicole turned to one of the tunnels, the one filled with at least six creepers pulling themselves to their feet from Garrus' blast, and raised her right hand. She tapped her index finger to her thumb, then to the inside of her palm, and an incendiary blast fired out of Nicole's modified gauntlet, directed by her omnitool. The charge hit one of the creepers and exploded, spreading liquid flame over them, immediately disintegrating the bodies. She grabbed her pistol and helped Garrus execute the creepers still in one tunnel, while Liara ripped the others apart with a massive singularity, doubly effective in the cramped space. For a moment they all stood ready, Nicole and Garrus with their weapons raised, Liara with a single palm extended, her arm wreathed in biotic energy.

Silence. Utter silence. They all breathed a sigh of relief. Nicole gave them a couple seconds to gather their senses. Then she ordered them onward, through the tunnel with the incinerated corpses, towards the Thorian's lair.


	15. Chapter 15

If it wouldn't have seemed improper, Liara would've all but clung to Nicole as they crept towards the source of all those … _things_. The source of all the madness. Nicole seemed utterly unshakeable, even, if Liara was honest, a little terrifying. She kept remembering the krogan, the way Nicole had just torn him apart. The sheer unbelievable skill on display would have been almost beautiful, if she hadn't been so coldly tearing into a krogan's skull. Liara knew it was silly to have been any more unnerved by killing with a knife than with bullets, but there had been so much blood. Not for the first time Liara realized how little experience she had with any of this kind of thing. It was utter foolishness to be stunned by someone killing a krogan with a knife, while merely impressed when they did the same thing with a gun. The former just took a great deal more skill.

"You know what I'm learning about myself?" Garrus said to no one in particular. Liara smiled to herself. At least Garrus' coping methods were entertaining. "I hate plants. Especially the walking, puking, vaguely-human shaped kind. Whole new part of my identity I never even knew about."

"Can either of you hear that?" Nicole asked. Liara blinked. She had no idea what Nicole was talking about. She focused, tried to drown out the noise of their footsteps, the sheer overwhelming silence of the tunnels … and there it was. She could hear a faint, irritated humming, but she couldn't tell where it was coming from. Once she had identified it, she felt deeply disturbed, like it wasn't just a _sound_, but something else.

"The Thorian," Garrus said certainly.

"That, or there are two psychic plants on this planet. It's strange, it … it almost reminds me of the Prothean beacon," Nicole murmured. Still they advanced down the tunnel, and Liara could feel the strange sound growing louder. It was absurd, but it made her feel like she was being chased by an Ardat-Yakshi, in one of the old stories her mother used to tell. In those stories there was always a brave Justicar to hunt the monster down. A Spectre, Liara thought, was close enough.

There was a bright light at the end of the tunnel they were in, a light that filled Liara with dread. The humming was louder, inside her head, ringing against her skull. If the colonists had been exposed to this for months, no wonder they had all gone mad. They walked into the light, and the tunnel opened into a giant cavern, with a massive pit below. Liara couldn't believe her eyes.

Hanging, supported by four vast arms clinging to the walls all around, was a giant creature, a massive body with a face made of grasping, sucking tentacles. It didn't have eyes, so much, but it its face gave little question as to where it was looking. Horrifically, the tentacles at the base of its body started to writhe, and green fluid dripped from its "mouth." Its throat bulged and Liara almost looked away, as a green-skinned asari in full combat gear dropped out of the Thorian's mouth, a malevolently lifeless expression on her face.

"Nice to meet you," Nicole said carefully. The asari turned towards her robotically by way of a response.

"We have suffered one of you meatbags to walk before us. Not again." The asari's voice was deep, resonating, and utterly unnatural. It sounded like someone was stretching her vocal chords over sandpaper. "The one you call Saren was here and tried to attack us for the knowledge we have obtained."  
"The knowledge?"

"We consumed the last Protheans here and absorbed their essence. We gave him our knowledge in exchange for this vessel, and the promise that we would be left alone. Saren betrayed us and tried to destroy us, but he was not strong enough. You will not be strong enough either."

"Actually," Nicole said conversationally, "I will." Then Nicole was an aggressive blur, rolling to the ground and behind the asari. She knocked out one leg, and in one swift movement grabbed her by the back of the head, forced her to the ground, and stuck her dagger in the asari's throat. Liara hadn't even seen Shepard draw the weapon. "Liara, creeper, your left! Liara!" She had gone straight for the Reyshi nerve, beneath the cluster of tentacles at the back of the neck. It was the quickest way to kill an asari. "Liara! Your left!"

Liara turned in time to see a creeper running towards her, its arms outstretched, its grotesque mouth hanging open. Its head exploded as Shepard's bullet tore through its skull, spraying the walls with green acid. Liara noticed that the walls were coated in some kind of fleshlike webbing.

"Liara, come on!" Garrus was yelling this time, and somehow his voice snapped her out of it. She spun around and saw Shepard fighting off three creepers, destroying one with a vicious punch to the jaw, shooting another in the chest and head in rapid succession. Liara recovered her wits in time to grab one with her biotics and fling it against the wall.

"We need to destroy the tethers to the wall! Three of them look like they're on accessible terrain!"

"What about the other one?"

Nicole unfolded her sniper rifle, knelt, pointed it at the node connected to the far wall, and fiddled with something in the side of her rifle. There was a distinct clicking, and what sounded like a ratcheting noise. A moment later a furious boom erupted from Nicole's rifle, and the node exploded in a fiery blur. The Thorian let out a scream as its body sagged to one side, not with any mouth, but through their minds, in their heads. Liara had to shut her eyes until it passed.

"Before you ask," Nicole said, getting to her feet, "I can only do that once."

"After we get back on board the _Normandy_, you are showing me how you did that," Garrus said hoarsely.

"High-Ex discharge. Uses half an ammunition block and it kicks like the Mako."

"I meant _in detail_," Garrus added. They ascended a staircase to the next level, towards another of the Thorian's nodes. They encountered more creepers, but Garrus and Nicole cut them down almost without effort. Nicole had started using her sniper rifle like an assault weapon, just mowing them down at close range. The high calibre rounds destroyed the creepers, ripping their bodies apart and scattering the hallways with their insides. It was only when they approached the wide, open room housing the Thorian's node that Liara remembered herself, and knocked aside a pair of creepers that had lurched out of a sac on the wall.

"I have incendiary charges but I don't want to waste them. Liara, do you think you can tear that thing apart? As far as I can tell it's just flesh."

"I should be able t—Commander, behind you!" Another asari was breaking free of a sac hidden beside the Thorian's node, clawing its way out of the purplish membrane. She was an exact copy of the asari Nicole had gutted earlier. Nicole raised her rifle to shoot it, but it already had biotic barriers raised. Somehow, it produced a weapon and pointed it at Nicole.

"Garrus!" Liara blurted. "Fire a concussive shot at the asari!"

"What?"

"Do it!" Despite the panic in Liara's voice, Garrus complied, knocking the asari back with the dull, fat grenade slung beneath his assault rifle's main barrel. The moment the asari hit the ground, Liara suspended her in midair with a singularity; in a fraction of a second, Nicole shot the asari in the head.

"Good call, Liara," Nicole said.

"Blunt force trauma will scatter biotic fields much more than any ordinary bullet," Liara explained. "It breaks the focus of the biotic, for one, and also spreads out the biotic energy particles the biotic is maintaining."

"Fascinating," Garrus commented. He turned his assault rifle on the node and squeezed the trigger down, firing until the giant arm was severed from the node. It tore away with a great groan, and the Thorian screamed again, echoing in Liara's mind. Could Garrus and Shepard not detect it? Or was Liara more vulnerable, somehow, as an asari? She tried not to let the pain show on her face. They still had work to do.

XXX

The third node was dealt with much as the second had been, with another asari clone to accompany it and a half-dozen of the Thorian's grotesque human creepers. Nicole cut them down easily enough with Garrus' help, but Liara was becoming increasingly withdrawn. Was it because of all the asari? It hadn't occurred to Nicole that seeing asari slaughtered might be difficult to watch for her, whether they were clones or not. As they felled the last asari clone the Thorian thrashed, heaving and flailing as its last root fell under attack. Nicole opened fire on the disgusting nodule with Garrus, and breathed a sigh of relief when the creature finally fell, dropping into the ancient pit below it. Nicole looked down at it as it fell, in awe that such a huge thing could move so quickly, that it could just fall through the air. Garrus watched, too.

Liara screamed.

Nicole turned around just as Liara fell, clutching at her head as she hit the ground, clawing at her skull. Nicole had heard people scream that way before. It was usually just before they burned to death. She rushed to Liara's side, supporting her head, trying to find out what was wrong. The asari's chest was rising and falling rapidly, and she stopped screaming. Her eyes were shut. There were three clasps beneath Liara's chestpiece. Nicole undid each of them and pulled the armour from Liara's chest, letting her breathe. Her chest started moving even more rapidly, though her breathing was faint. Nicole ripped off her glove and grabbed the back of Liara's neck. She dug her finger in between the small collection of tentacles there, pressing past a bone in the base of the neck. She hadn't broken anything but it would hurt like hell. The pain forced Liara to open her eyes.

"Liara! Liara, listen to me! Embrace eternity! Do it now!" Liara just stared, her eyes turning black with a fluid that primed the asari's brain for a joining. Nicole shook Liara's head, jostling the nerve her finger was pressed against. "_Liara!_"

Then the world went black.

XXX

Liara wasn't herself. She was a ten year old human girl. She'd come running to where her brother worked, her brother's name was Ryan and she was very scared, so she'd come running to the med-tent where he oversaw all the patients and helped everyone stay alive. The shock of being two people made Liara's mind reel—her mind, not the girl's. The girl's mind was in a memory. It couldn't change.

She was short, and large people were panicking, running around. She saw a woman with a gun running out of the med-tent, going somewhere else. She looked for her brother. He was standing with a group of patients, ordering someone to be pushed somewhere. So she ran towards him, trying very hard not to cry. He turned around, and his face changed from determined to terrified in a moment. He was light-skinned, green-eyed, and had red-hair. Exactly like her.

_Goddess_. Liara tried to pull away, tried to leave the memory, but she couldn't. She was kept there. She remembered the Thorian's screaming, remembered it dying in her mind….

"Nicole! Nicky, what are you doing here? I told you to hide!" But he ran to her and hugged her anyway, bending on one knee so that his white doctor's coat trailed against the red earth. He rustled her hair in one hand and hugged her tight to his chest, and she was safe, she knew she was. "Nicky you've got to go. You have to go, okay?"

"I can't," Liara said, in a voice that sounded nothing like her own. Her voice shook in the exact fashion of a child unable to stop crying. "We have to—I need to—"

"Nicole, you need to listen to me." Her brother pulled back from her and looked in her eyes. He was crying, too, though he was ignoring it. "Nicole, you can't stay here, all right? You can't, it's not safe. You have to trust me. You need to get somewhere very small, somewhere you can hide, where nobody will think to look. Please. You have to do that for me."

"But—"

"Goddammit Nicole!" She flinched away from the sudden anger, not out of fear of him but terrified, terrified because she'd never heard her brother yell before. Ryan didn't yell, that was just—she knew that. "I need you to do this for me, okay? I need you to promise me." He took her hands. "Promise me you'll survive." The child couldn't know, but Liara knew what the look on his face meant. He knew he was going to die and he was trying desperately not to be afraid in front of his sister. Tears slipped out of his eyes and his jaw clenched. Facial muscles worked to not work beneath his skin. "Please."

"I promise!" Nicole said. "But—"

"Just do that, and everything will be okay, all right? Everything will be okay." He kissed her on the head. "Survive."

"You'll survive too, right?"

"Everything will be okay," he promised her. "Go."

And Liara realized that she must have gone.

XXX

"If you move, congeal, or vomit anything at me I will shoot you so thoroughly your ancestors' spirits will have holes in them!" Garrus barked, training the barrel of his assault rifle on the asari. She'd fallen out of a pod in the wall, gasping for breath, an exact replica of the ones Shepard had variously stabbed, dismembered, and exploded. This one had blue skin and didn't seem to be a threat, but with both Shepard and Liara comatose, he wasn't taking any risks. "Hands on the ground, fingers splayed!"

"Aren't you thorough," the asari mumbled, complying with little vigor. She was wearing the same armour that all the other asari had been, but hers seemed older, and it had a few more dents. She was obviously weak. Garrus made sure the safety wasn't engaged on his rifle. Loaded up a concussive round in the secondary barrel, to be sure. "I was—I was working with Matriarch Benezia. We came with Saren, I … it seemed so hard to resist what he was saying. To disagree…."

"You can discuss your mental problems with a therapist. Details. Now."

"We—we were looking for the Thorian. Saren needed its knowledge to make sense of the Prothean Beacon … so he gave me up to the Thorian as an exchange. Then he tried to destroy the Thorian."

"Guessing that didn't go too well, huh?" Garrus asked.

"Well it was still here when you showed up," the asari replied. "What do you think?"

"What about what's happened to my squadmate?" Garrus demanded.

"It—I don't know. The Thorian had my entire body to use to replicate me and … understand asari physiology. It only had its grasp on the human colonists to create its human clones with. That's probably why they're so—"

"Disgusting," Garrus supplied.

"Yes. Maybe because it had access to a full asari, it was able to, I don't know—attack her. Try to take over her mind or … I don't know. It was furious with you when it died, beyond anger. It might just be simple spite. It might just be trying to bring her down with it."

XXX

The kicks to her stomach were almost soothing. She was fifteen now, much taller, much stronger, much more silent. When Liara had been inside the ten-year-old's mind it had been like standing inside of a hurricane. Now there was almost nothing but cold acceptance. She was naked and her hands were tried behind her back. She was laying on a cold steel floor. While a woman beat her and occasionally thrust her face into a bucket of salt water, a man in a lab coat _tsk'd_ his disapproval. The pain overwhelmed her—_her_, Liara, not the girl. Liara couldn't take it, had to retreat into the girl's mind when the woman thrust her into the salt water again. She was pulled back up by her hair and directed to another bucket to vomit in. Pure stomach acid stained the metal container.

The woman threw her to the ground and walked to the corner of the room, out of sight. One of Liara's eyes was swollen shut. The man in the lab coat stepped into view, and had to bend down to meet her eyes. Even now the girl looked back, expressionless, the only tears coming down her face the ones produced purely by physical pain. Liara was panicking and utterly terrified, but the girl's mind was empty, accepting, assessing. No permanent damage. They weren't done with her yet.

"Explain this recording," the man said. He handed her a tablet. Liara was confused. Why would anyone use such a thing? Immediately information overwhelmed her from the girl's brain—no omni-tools were allowed at Shadowhill except in express training exercises. The tablets were proprietary and strictly limited to a single programmed function. This one would only play a single video.

It displayed a young girl in a square room, assessing a tactical readout display on a table screen. A tinny voice from the ceiling directed her:

_"Identify persons of interest_."

Mechanically, the girl in the video pointed to three little dots. The video shut off. Liara knew because Nicole knew: one of the dots she identified had been an asari. That was her crime. That was what this was for.

"_Persons_, Nicole. _Persons_. Have you not learned this basic lesson yet? You are in every other way our best candidate," the man said. Gabreau. "But this stubbornness of yours is not acceptable. Do you understand?"

"Yes." As Nicole said it, as Liara felt her mouth shape the words, she knew it was a lie. She knew she both wanted to understand and refused to, could not—that this one thing she could not learn. If she did she would lose something, something she knew she would never get back, something that was precious and irreplaceable. But she didn't know what it was.

Liara was waking, leaving the memory, leaving the nightmare behind, but she struggled to stay. As she felt her consciousness leaving the young girl she reached out, not wanting to leave her alone in that cell, not able to watch as she was punished. But she couldn't. The girl was alone in the cell. She always had been.

Always would be.

XXX

"Your friends are recovering," the asari said dryly. Garrus kept his assault rifle trained on her.

"Shepard? Liara?"

"All here, I think," came the weary reply, from Shepard. Garrus backed up so that he could keep his squadmates and the asari in his field of view. Shepard got to her feet first, and offered Liara a hand. The asari took it, still looking more than a little dazed. She was staring at Shepard, though Garrus supposed if Shepard had just saved _his_ life, he'd be a little lost for words, too. "Sorry about that, but it was the only thing I could think to do. We had to share the neural load."

"The neural load," Liara repeated. "Right. Of course."

"Not to interrupt, but we have a minor situation here," Garrus said, gesturing towards the prone asari. "She fell out of one of the Thorian's wall-sacs there. Says she was working for Matriarch Benezia and that Saren left her here as a gift to the Thorian in exchange for its knowledge on the Protheans. Something about Saren being very hard to resist. How am I doing?" Garrus asked the asari. She somehow managed to shrug despite being flat against the ground.

"That's more or less it."

"How deeply connected were you with the Thorian's mind?" Shepard asked. She'd taken her helmet off, a sweaty sheen glistening on her forehead. Human hair looked utterly bizarre when it was wet—there was no other word for it. Then again, human hair was generally pretty freaky. They were the only species that had such abundant hair growth, as far as Garrus knew. Nicole wiped the offending follicles out of her eyes and walked over to the asari. "Get up and answer the question," Nicole said. She was terrifying when she used that tone—something in her voice promised very serious repercussions for anyone who disobeyed. The asari got to her feet, and went about answering the question.

"I was—it was like I was lost in its consciousness. Like a joining, but a lot less comfortable."

"You don't say," Nicole replied thoughtfully. "The Thorian's knowledge of the Protheans—do you have it?"

"I think so. I believe so. Yes." The asari was clearly uncomfortable with the way Nicole was staring at her. "It's like—a cipher. A sort of neurological code. That's how the Thorian knew how to create replicas of organisms, it scanned us like bar codes and made an imitation with its own materials. It had a pretty good Prothean cipher."

"Can you give it to me?" Nicole asked.

"You really trust me inside your head?" The asari sounded incredulous. Nicole smiled.

"You _really_ don't want to be in my head without permission." The asari took Nicole's hand and started the joining, very aware that Nicole apparently knew how to force the process if need be. In another moment it was over. Clearly neither of them had meant to prolong it. "Thank you. What's your name?"

"Shiala," the asari muttered, rubbing at her temples. "I suppose I should be thanking you."

"Thank him for not shooting you," Nicole said, jerking her head in Garrus' direction. "We can take you back to the surface, as long as you're not planning to go back to Saren."

"Not in this lifetime," Shiala promised. "Never again. He … he gets in your head. I can't explain it, but … when we were with him, it was impossible to resist. I think Benezia wanted to try to help him, or guide him, but …."

"But what?" Liara spoke up for the first time, walking past Shepard and grabbing the asari by the arm. "Please, tell me! She's my mother!"

"I'm sorry," Shiala said earnestly. "When you're around Saren, his point of view just seems like the right one. I can't explain it, but now that he's gone my mind is clear again. Your mother is a powerful woman, but even she couldn't hold out for too long. It was always stronger on his ship, Sovereign. I wish I could tell you more, but my memories are scattered. I don't know where they're headed."

"Don't worry, Liara," Shepard said. "We'll find her. If Shiala's not lying to me," Shepard regarded Shiala with a look which plainly communicated what a grave mistake that would be, "It sounds as though your mother isn't willingly participating with Saren. We may be able to break his hold on her."

"Thank you," Liara said softly. "For everything." Nicole looked surprised, but only shrugged.

"You don't have to thank me."

Garrus wasn't quite sure that was true. He watched Liara's face as Shepard turned from her and knew that Liara agreed with him. A light chime came from somewhere, and Garrus realized it was from Shepard's omnitool. That was strange—Shepard had disabled her omnitool's visual interface, let alone any audible signals. She checked something and frowned, pulling her helmet back on.

"All right, let's go," Shepard ordered.

Garrus led them out of the tunnels, guessing that Nicole and Liara were still more than a little worn out from whatever the Thorian had done. Shiala was probably in the same boat, but she managed to keep up. Strangely, Shepard lagged behind a little. He decided not to mention it.

"Here's hoping those creeper things died with mommy," Garrus muttered. "You all okay back there?" He called over one shoulder. Liara and Shiala were relatively close, but Shepard had put a fair bit of distance between them. "Shepard?"

"Go on," Shepard ordered curtly. Garrus obeyed—turians had it instilled in them since birth to defer to a superior officer's judgment, and on a personal level Garrus had not yet seen any evidence that Nicole Shepard ever made mistakes. Not tactical ones, at any rate.

"You know we had to kill about a half-dozen of you," Garrus told Shiala conversationally.

"I assure you, I didn't have any say in the matter," Shiala replied. For someone who'd been trapped inside a giant plant's mucus sac, she was surprisingly upbeat.

"If it's any consolation your clones were damn fine biotics."

"I'm thrilled."

"Can't say I'd have much of a sense of humour about it, either, I guess. Liara, you okay?"

"Yes, Garrus, I—"

Liara was cut off by a rapid, faint beeping, and then the unmistakeable boom of high explosives. Garrus ducked, but the explosion had come from behind. Liara was okay, and Shiala was fine, too, but Shepard was nowhere to be seen.

"Shepard?" Garrus tried the comm-link. "_Shepard?_"

"_I'm fine. Behind the rubble. Figured that would happen. Return to the _Normandy_ and wait for me._"

"_Shepard_—"

"_That is an order. If you displace the rubble you might further destabilize the tunnel. All three of you get out—_now."

"_Yes, Commander._" Garrus looked doubtfully at the piled debris, wondering how thick it was. He wondered if there was even another route to the surface. If there was, Shepard would find it. But if there wasn't….

"_Shepard! We cannot leave you!_" Liara said, sounding near tears. Garrus looked at her, utterly confused.

"Liara?"

"_I'll be fine,_" Shepard said, sounding surprised. "_I'm better solo anyway._" The Commander cut off the comms.

"You heard her," Garrus said, trying to sound comforting. "Does she strike you as the kind of woman who can't handle herself?"

"She should not have to," Liara insisted. Garrus got the feeling she wasn't really talking to him.

"People like her do anyway," Shiala opined. "My father was like that. Turian warrior."

"What happened to your father?" Liara asked. Shiala smiled sadly.

"She died, evacuating civilians during a terrorist attack on a museum." A terrorist attack on a museum. That didn't surprise Garrus. Turians took their history very seriously. "She was on leave at the time. The whole building just came down around her."

XXX

_I can't believe I'm doing this._ Ten clutched the SMG Tobias had given her, trying to take comfort in the weight of the weapon. She'd followed Shepard down into the tunnel, placed the charges. Observed the fight with the Thorian from above. She'd had a dozen opportunities to engage her, but this was her last chance. If she hadn't detonated that trigger she would have had to go back to Tobias without having even tried.

Pressing that button had been one of the hardest things she'd ever done. Shepard had disappeared from Ten's instruments the moment the bomb had gone off—not surprising. Whatever "technical cloak" Tobias had given Ten, no doubt Shepard had something like it.

_And now I'm trapped in here with her._

Ten had been very young when she'd been taken, but she'd shown promise. She knew that. Gabreau had liked her, but she'd never been good enough: never been fast enough, never been quite as good a shot. Of course she was _good_, better than most soldiers, but Gabreau hadn't wanted better. Gabreau had wanted something beyond human. Ten had hated Shepard for a long time, before she realized what she'd realized about Tobias: Shepard had it just as bad as she did, if not worse. Tobias didn't have a heart anymore, had an exosuit grafted onto his skin to keep him alive.

Ten realized that she didn't want to die. Not really. There was too much she hadn't done.

She thought she heard something, shifting in the tunnels. This was absurd. She was supposed to be hunting Shepard, not the other way around. And yet….

Running was all she was good for. Ten knew that. She'd survived Shadowhill and Noveria only because she could run. She could avoid danger. But now she'd brought it on herself. She wished she could remember her name, even the first letter. She wanted a name. When she'd been younger she'd constructed fantasies in her head, of being adopted and given the name of her generous parents, or starting a family of her own and assuming a name, until it became her identity, and that was all she was, a woman with a name, not an assassin from Shadowhill.

She tossed the SMG to the ground and reclined against the wall. This was pointless. Shepard could kill her without even trying. The only thing she could do now was to wait. Even when she'd run away, Gabreau had still owned her. He owned her down to the chemicals in her blood, bonded to her cells, more than any of her fantasies could ever be.

She didn't hate anyone anymore. All the hate had been burned out of her. She didn't have anything left, just a single, solitary wish, that somehow, against everything she knew to be true, she could have even one day as a human being. She looked at her left hand, at the injector dug into her skin. It was good for another couple of months. Didn't matter now.

She wondered if she'd had a mother. She'd probably been an orphan, but … maybe her mother had died, instead of abandoning her. That was her favourite dream, that just maybe, someone had loved her. Even if it had only been for a little while, before the splatter of a car crash or the short finality of a gunshot.

Footsteps, coming for her. Ten didn't want to care, but she did. She looked up, at the tall, armoured woman approaching her. The figure had a pistol in one hand. At least Nicole Shepard would be quick about it. That was—no, that wasn't enough. She wanted to live. She wanted so desperately to live. Shepard sat across from her, the gun still in her hand.

"Twelve," Ten said, by way of greeting. Shepard nodded.

"Ten?" Ten nodded. She didn't know how Shepard knew that. Didn't want or need to. "Why'd you wait so long?"

"I didn't want to hurt your friends. I just thought that would be … sloppy."

"Sloppy," Shepard repeated. Ten looked her in the face, dared her to think differently. Ten saw the N7 logo on her armour, the Systems Alliance mark, the thing that meant _human_ and wanted to weep out of jealousy.

"Would you just do it?" Ten begged. "Please. I can't take this. I can't."

"I'm not going to kill you."

"If you don't, Nine will."

"Can you run away?"

"No." Ten held up her wrist. "Addiction. What did Thirteen call it? A powerful motivator. No matter what I do, they have me."

"I'm sorry."

"Please. Please, if you can't stop it, if you can't stop them—please just kill me. I don't want to—"

"I'm not going to kill you," Shepard repeated. "Are you working directly for him?" There was no question as to who "him" was. Not Nine. Not Tobias.

"No. Nine found me. He was supposed to kill me, too."

"How long do you have on that thing?"

"Two months, fourteen days. Then I die anyway."

Nicole looked at her, their expressions identical. They didn't have to pretend to be normal around each other, and Ten sensed that they were both grateful for that. There were no secrets between them.

"Will you promise not to hurt my friends?"

"I will."

"You know the way out of here?"

"Yeah. It's far from Zhu's Hope."

"That's okay."

They walked out together. In silence they returned to the surface, the surface of a dead world. Nicole Shepard turned to go.

"Thank you," Ten said. She'd have to go back to Tobias. He'd find her if she tried to flee. She mightn't survive the encounter, but she was grateful that Nicole Shepard had given her the chance to try. Nicole looked back to her.

"You could come with me. I can—we can try to find a way to save you." The sun was setting behind her. Ten wished she could say yes, but it was too late for her now.

"Go back to your friends, please. You're the only one who—you're the only one who ever got out. You have to go."

"I know."

When she left she walked into the sunset, back to a colony named Hope. Ten sat in the dust and waited for Nine. He would come soon. Had he always known she would fail? Had he always known she wouldn't even try? She hoped he wouldn't kill her. Now more than before, she realized that despite all reason, she wanted to live.


End file.
